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Hostinger's Growth, LinkedIn India, and This Week's Funding

20 Jul 2026

Global tech platforms are increasingly leaning on distributed hubs and emerging markets to fuel growth — a pattern this week's roundup makes hard to ignore. From a Lithuanian hosting company posting its fourth straight year of 50%+ growth to LinkedIn's India R&D center taking on global product ownership, the throughline is clear: talent and demand are no longer concentrated in traditional tech capitals.

Hostinger's Quiet Global Ascent

Founded in Kaunas, Lithuania in 2004, Hostinger has grown into a web hosting provider serving customers in more than 150 countries. The company closed 2025 with revenue of 275.4 million euros — up 51% year-over-year and its fourth consecutive year of growth above 50%.

Notably, India is now Hostinger's largest market by active users, ahead of Brazil, Indonesia, and the United States — a signal of how emerging economies are driving demand for core digital infrastructure like hosting.

Hostinger CMO Kristina Strimaite offered a pointed take on AI's role inside the company: AI won't replace people, she said, but it will replace those who aren't curious or don't use it.

LinkedIn's Bengaluru Hub Goes Beyond Development

LinkedIn's R&D center in Bengaluru has transformed over 15 years from a development outpost into a hub that helps shape global product direction. India-based teams now own end-to-end product development for LinkedIn Sales Solutions and build AI, data, and infrastructure platforms that power millions of users worldwide.

Malai Lakshmanan, LinkedIn's Head of India Engineering, described Bengaluru as the largest R&D hub outside Silicon Valley — one where the company doesn't just build for the world, but increasingly decides what to build next.

Funding Roundup

Several notable rounds closed recently:

  • udaan raised $160M in a combined equity and debt round.
  • Emergent raised $130M in a Series C round.
  • Neo Group raised Rs 350 Cr in an undisclosed round.
  • Aurrevia, an investment platform, launched a Category III alternative investment fund (AIF) backed by a $10 million anchor commitment from the Kothari Family Office through Aarii Ventures.

The report does not include valuation details or investor names behind these rounds, nor specifics on Aurrevia's fund strategy or target sectors.

Other Notable Developments

  • Netflix reported that around 300 titles used GenAI this year, though no details were given on how it was applied across those titles.
  • India's first hydrogen-powered train is now operating on the Jind-Sonipat route in Haryana, powered by a 1,200-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system. Timeline and funding details for the project were not disclosed.
  • Skyroot Aerospace is set to launch Vikram-1 — India's first private orbital rocket — on July 18 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. No payload or mission objective details were available.
  • Apple overtook Nvidia to become the world's most valuable company, though the report offers no context on the market conditions behind the shift.
  • Chinese startup Moonshot AI unveiled a new model, Kimi K3, with no technical specifications provided.
  • Fisker, once seen as a Tesla rival, filed for bankruptcy in 2024 — a reminder of the capital intensity and risk baked into EV and hardware ventures.

Why Founders Should Care

Hostinger's multi-year growth streak suggests that sustained reinvestment in global infrastructure can plausibly support high growth rates well beyond a company's early years — a data point worth watching for founders in SaaS or infrastructure plays. Similarly, LinkedIn's shift toward giving its Bengaluru hub full product ownership may indicate that founders building distributed teams could benefit from granting regional hubs more end-to-end responsibility rather than treating them as delivery centers.

The cluster of large funding rounds — spanning logistics (udaan), an unspecified Series C (Emergent), and Neo Group's Rs 350 Cr raise — likely reflects continued investor appetite for Indian startups across sectors, though the lack of valuation data makes it hard to gauge how aggressively capital is being deployed.

At the same time, risks are worth flagging. Startups leaning on concentrated backing — as Aurrevia does with its $10 million anchor commitment — may face exposure if that single relationship changes. Fisker's 2024 bankruptcy is a reminder that capital-intensive hardware and EV bets can fail despite strong early positioning. And the emergence of new AI models like Kimi K3 suggests competitive pressure in AI is likely to keep intensifying, which could affect any startup building AI-dependent products.

The Bottom Line

This week's roundup points to two parallel stories: established platforms like Hostinger and LinkedIn deepening their reliance on global and India-based growth engines, and a steady drumbeat of funding activity across Indian startups. Founders should watch how regional hubs are gaining product authority — and stay mindful of concentration and capital-intensity risks highlighted elsewhere in the data.

Sources

  • [From Lithuania to the world: Hostinger’s evolution;

How LinkedIn India is driving global products](https://yourstory.com/2026/07/lithuania-to-the-world-hostinger-evolution-linkedin-india-driving-global-products)