To gain unicorn status, private companies must be valued at more than $1 billion without listing on the stock markets. Rapido has thus reached the $1 billion grand company valuation and is expected to make $20 million more from investors overseas. The two-wheeler service company have raised a total of $329 million as reported by Tracxn.

Swiggy, a primary investor in the 2022 funding round did not participate in this year’s funding. The 2022 funding round was led by Swiggy, a food delivery app. The funding round raised over $180 million which raised the company’s valuation to $825 million that year.

Rapido: More on The Company

The startup was founded in 2015 by co-founders, Pavan Guntupalli, Rishtikesh SR and Aravind Sanka. The company is based in Bangalore, Karnataka, India and the service is available in more than a hundred cities all over India.

Furthermore, the company has over 25 million app downloads with more than 10 million customers. The transport service is not only limited to two-wheelers as the service also extends to taxis and auto-rikshaws as well.

The startup was developed as a cheaper alternative to traditionally expensive taxis. It also provides passengers with affordable and transparent pricing, without any hidden charges.

Additionally, Rapido also emphasizes safety as they have safety measures put in place to protect both the passengers and the drivers.

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Genspark taps generative AI to write custom summaries in response to search queries. This innovative search engine uses multiple AI model providers to index as well as summarize information.

In-house models and multiple specialised AI agents are utilised by this AI search engine. It categorizes users’ search queries and also determines how to organise and present the results. This approach delivers useful results on a single page, enhancing user experience. Genspark’s AI models favour webpages with high authority and popularity filtering out the more ‘out there’ information.

Genspark’s CEO, Eric Jing previously led Baidu’s AI-powered smartphone and smart speaker unit up until 2023. The startup’s team consisting of 20 people are split between Palo Alto, California and Singapore. Plans are also being made to expand the office to Seattle.

Singapore-based fund, Lanchi Ventures is leading the funding. It has valued the startup at $260 million but this does not include revenue. Lanchi Ventures was formally known as BlueRun Ventures China and it rebranded in 2023 to distance itself from its Silicon Valley origin BlueRun Ventures.

Currently focused on serving the U.S. market, Genspark is offering its search engine for free. However, the start-up has potential plans to introduce paid subscriptions in the future. It uses an array of language models to deal with tasks, from open-source options such as Meta’s Llama to OpenAI’s GPT models.

Competition in the Search Engine Market

Genspark’s funding comes right at the renewal of competition in the search engine market, as AI models show new ways for people to gather and access information on the internet. You.com, a rival search engine is close to raising another $50 million in funding. Meanwhile, Perplexity, which is already a unicorn, is in talks to procure additional funding.

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