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Video telematics startup Lightmetrics on Wednesday said it has raised USD 8.5 million (about Rs 69 crore) in a funding round from Sequoia Capital India. The Bengaluru-based platform uses edge AI and analyses video feeds from the camera installed in vehicles to better understand driver behaviour, and reduce accidents and improve safety. It claims to serve over 2,500 fleet across India, the Middle East, the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, and South Africa. The company will use the funds raised in Series-A round to strengthen its teams from the engineering, customer success, product, marketing, sales and analytics sides for growth. Lightmetrics was founded in 2015 by Soumik Ukil, Ravi Shenoy, Mithun Uliyar, Gururaj Putraya, Pushkar Patwardhan and Krishna AG, who had worked together at Nokia Research on computer vision and ML for cameras.
Venture Capital firm Sequoia is bullish on India and has invested in several startups that are expected to become unicorns in the coming years, a report said. Recently, Sequoia Capital raised USD 2.85 billion to fund Indian and Southeast Asian startups despite the markets cooling after a very long bull run. The fundraising is Sequoia's largest so far for India at USD 2 billion with the rest committed to Southeast Asian startups. The fund house has stakes in 39 startups that could turn unicorns in 2-4 years, according to ASK Private Wealth Hurun India Future Unicorn Index 2022. In its 16th year of operation in India, Sequoia has some blockbusters in its kitty like Turtlemint, SaaS Labs, Classplus, DeHaat, Porter, Progcap, and CityMall, the report said, adding these have the potential to become unicorns in the next two years. Unicorns are startups with a turnover of USD 1 billion or about Rs 8,000 crore. Sequoia Capital in its recent communication said there is a strong sense in the