New Delhi: Ashneer Grover, BharatPe’s former CEO, has raised $4 million for his venture Third Unicorn Pvt Ltd, in seed funding, according to the reports.
ZNL Growth Fund led the round, and the funding round saw participation from over two dozen angel investors, including Anirudh Kedia, Anmol Singh Jaggi, Vishal Kedia, among others.
‘Crickpe’ is a cricket fantasy gaming platform launched by Third Unicorn. While the website still seems to be in the development phase, but it does show Crickpe – powered by Third Unicorn.
Grover recently commented on LinkedIn: “Third Unicorn has quietly and peacefully built a business that is shaking the market. Bootstrapped. Without limelight. And we are doing things differently. Very differently.”
Further, he shared a slideshow which gave a sneak peek of his new venture and shared how with just 50 members, his new company will start. Additionally, he promised to give Mercedes to employees who completed five years in Third Unicorn. “Gratuity to bezzati liye hoti hai,” he said.
The company is only looking towards India-based investors and asked venture capitalists to stay away. He added, “VCs-SheC’s, please stay away. We use only desi/self-earned capital.”
While celebrating his 40th birthday last year, Grover announced on the social media app Twitter that he was ready with plans to build another “unicorn” and re-enter the world of business.
In July last year, the couple Grover and Madhuri Jain Grover launched Third Unicorn Private Limited. The company has a total paid-up capital of ₹10 lakh and ₹20 lakh of authorised share capital.
After his post-graduation, Grover has been closely connected with the investment world. An alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Delhi, he worked for seven years at Kotak Mahindra’s investment banking division before moving to American Express in 2013, where he led startup investments for the card network in India.
Ashneer then joined an online grocery startup, Grofers, founded by Albinder Dhindsa, his IIT-Delhi classmate. However, in 2017 he left the startup because of disappointment over not getting the ESOPs as promised to him. After that, he worked at PC Jeweller Ltd for almost a year before joining BharatPe in June 2018.
