Dailyhunt parent VerSe Innovation acquires Vebbler for an undisclosed amount

• Last month, VerSe Innovation acquired AI solutions startup Cognirel Technologies for an undisclosed amount.
• With this buyout, Vebbler will power VerSe's short video sharing platform Josh.
• VerSe Innovation operates Dailyhunt, a news aggregator platform that currently reaches 300+ million users.

Dailyhunt parent company VerSe Innovation has announced its second acquisition by acquiring Vebbler, a photo and video sharing platform, for an undisclosed amount.

The announcement comes almost two weeks after it acquired Bengaluru-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution startup Cognirel Technologies for an undisclosed amount.

With this buyout, Vebbler is expected to power VerSe's short video sharing platform Josh which currently has more than 50 million downloads on the play store. Besides Josh, VerSe Innovation also operates Dailyhunt, a vernacular news aggregator platform that currently reaches 300+ million users.

Commenting on the development, Virendra Gupta and Umang Bedi, Founders of VerSe Innovation, said in a joint statement, "The combination of Vebbler’s product capabilities with our platform will improve our ability to drive innovation around the camera and social engagement, and play a more meaningful role in capturing the mindshare, timeshare, and revenue share of Bharat’s local language users."

''Leveraging Vebblers camera and community will give Josh a powerful differentiator in the market and present millions of Josh users the additional opportunity to harness India's diverse creativity and talent'', the press statement said.

Founded in 2015 by Sahil Bhagat, Vebbler Technologies Private Limited, which owns and operates Vebbler, allows people to join groups called 'clubs' and share photos and videos around different interests, whether it's fashion, travel, photography or entertainment. The platform is available in five languages --- English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, and Kannada. To date, Vebbler has raised over $500k in funding, according to CrunchBase.

On the acquisition, Sahil Bhagat, said, "In VerSe Innovations vision, we find strategic synergies between Josh and Vebbler.''

Vebbler is funded by various angel investors and was backed initially by Dino Morea and Nikhil Chinnappa.

In December last year, VerSe Innovation turned into a unicorn with $100 million funding from Google, Microsoft Corporation, and Falcon Edge’s Alpha Wave Incubation. Existing investors of the company also took part in the round.

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