BENGALURU, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Emergent, an Indian startup that creates software applications, announced on Tuesday it has secured $70 million in a funding round. The investment was led by SoftBank Vision Fund and Khosla Ventures.
The Series B financing follows a $23 million Series A round completed four months earlier with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Prosus, and others. Additional funding came from the Google AI Futures Fund in December. Participants in the current round also included Prosus, Lightspeed, Together Fund, and Y Combinator.
Emergent did not reveal the valuation for this latest funding. SoftBank's involvement marks its first new investment in an Indian startup in over three years, having previously focused on follow-on rounds to maintain stakes.
The company reported it has attracted over 5 million users and achieved $50 million in annual recurring revenue within seven months of launch.
"Emergent is early in shaping how software gets created and monetized over the next decade, not just the next product cycle, and its users are quick to share their success," said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures.
Mukund Jha, co-founder and CEO of Emergent, told Reuters the startup intends to use the funds to grow its research and engineering teams in San Francisco and Bengaluru. Jha, who previously founded the now-defunct firm Dunzo, said the goal is to develop more products.
"A lot of the investment will go into building and further advancing our products and also advancing our research into coding agents," Jha stated.
He noted interest from individuals looking to build businesses using apps, adding that the "democratization of software building" is poised to become "a massive trend."