IT Startup Fareye Aiming To Turn Unicorn In A Year, Says Founder

IT startup Fareye expects to turn unicorn within next six to 12 months based on the revenue growth trend the company is recording, which is mainly driven by business in the US.

Fareye CEO and co-founder Kushal Nahata said that the company has doubled its team size in the US and Europe as well as increased its engineering team by 25 members in the last two quarters to support the growth.

The e-commerce focussed software-as-a-service (SaaS) raised $100 million from series E round led by TCV and Dragoneer Investment Group.

Existing investors Eight Roads Ventures, Fundamentum and Honeywell also participated in the round.

"In the next round of funding we will probably feel closer to it. I think in the next 6-12 months we will be unicorn. It's just a tag you get and it doesn't change anything on the business front. It is a combination of investors' insight and the round of funding we get," Mr Nahata said.

He said that $100 million funding is enough for the company to become a unicorn and even cross that level without any additional funding.

The Fareye founder claims to have recorded 180 per cent jump in its revenue in the financial year ended March 31, 2021 and the company continues to grow at 100 per cent annual revenue rate.
The company plans to continue hiring in India as well as overseas to drive its growth.

"This year we plan to increase our strength by over 1,000 across our five offices in Chicago, London, Dubai, Singapore and India," Mr Nahata said.

Talking about the company's business order book, he said 50 per cent is from the US and the other 50 per cent is Europe, South East Asia and India as the key markets.

"In Europe, we are essentially focussing on Western Europe. Last year, we were not focusing on India but in the last two quarters our India pipeline is crazy and has grown eight times to what it was," Mr Nahata said.

He said that the festive season was a great period for business of the company and growth in most of the categories are coming back if not increasing, at least bouncing back where they were before.

The company is currently focussing on D2C (direct to consumer) and B2C (business to consumer) across categories including grocery, food, fresh, electronics and helping them in improving upon deliveries.

"We are looking at the businesses who are trying to deliver to customers in a specific amount of time, with a highly predictable time frame, those are the businesses we are going after. The demand is high in India for companies to improve their deliveries and we have a lot in store," Mr Nahata said.