{"id":16309,"date":"2019-02-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2019\/02\/07\/the-meditation-unicorn-calm-raises-88-million-at-1-billion-valuation\/"},"modified":"2019-02-07T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T12:00:00","slug":"the-meditation-unicorn-calm-raises-88-million-at-1-billion-valuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2019\/02\/07\/the-meditation-unicorn-calm-raises-88-million-at-1-billion-valuation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Meditation Unicorn: Calm Raises $88 Million at $1 billion Valuation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2019\/02\/06\/the-meditation-unicorn-calm-raises-88-million-at-1-billion-valuation\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Alex-_-Michael-_June-2018.jpg?w=578&#038;strip=all\" style=\"max-width:100%;object-fit:scale-down;\" \/><br \/>SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, February 6, 2019 (Venture Beat): Meditation and mental health-focused startup Calm has raised $88 million in a series B round of funding led by TPG Growth, with participation from Insight Venture Partners, Ashton Kutcher&#8217;s Sound Ventures, and Creative Artists Agency (CAA). This takes Calm&#8217;s total funding past the $115 million mark and elevates the San Francisco-based company to the prestigious &#8220;unicorn&#8221; club &#8212; it now has a valuation of exactly $1 billion. Founded in 2012 by Michael Acton Smith, Calm is one of a number of &#8220;mindfulness&#8221; startups to attract the attentions of VCs in recent times. In the past year alone, we&#8217;ve seen Shine raise $5 million for its motivational messaging app, while Simple Habit secured $10 million for its &#8220;bite-size&#8221; audio meditation plans and BioBeats nabbed $3 million to combat stress with meditation and breathing exercises. Other notable players in the space include Headspace, which has also attracted vast chunks of venture capital funding.<\/p>\n<p>Not only has Calm been profitable for several years already, it can now lay legitimate claim to being the first mental health-focused unicorn, which is quite a remarkable feat when you consider it has a team of just 50. But its growth is perhaps a sign of the times &#8212; the meditation industry is reportedly worth more than $1 billion in the U.S. alone, while the broader &#8220;wellness&#8221; sector is estimated at several trillion dollars, according to the Global Wellness Institute. &#8220;We started as a meditation app, but have grown far beyond that,&#8221; added Acton Smith. &#8220;Our vision is to build one of the most valuable and meaningful brands of the 21st century. Health and wellness is a $4 trillion industry, and we believe there is a big opportunity to build the leading company in this fast-growing and important space.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, February 6, 2019 (Venture Beat): Meditation and mental health-focused startup Calm has raised $88 million in,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}