Dailyhunt Parent VerSe Innovation Raises $100 Million From Qatar Investment Authority, Others

• In late December 2020, VerSe Innovation turned unicorn after it raised $100 million from Google, Microsoft, and others.
• The company will use the latest funding in scaling up the growth of its video-sharing platform Josh.
• Investors including Qatar Investments Authority, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Canaan Valley Capital, and Sofina Group participated in the funding round.

Unicorn Dailyhunt parent company VerSe Innovation has raised $100 million (or about Rs 729 crore) in a Series H funding round led by global investors, including sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and US-based investment management firm Glade Brook Capital Partners.

Other investors, Canaan Valley Capital and Sofina Group, also participated in the funding round.

The announcement comes almost two months after when it raised $100 million in funding in December 2020 at a valuation of over $1 billion co-led by Google, Microsoft, Falcon Edge’s Alpha Wave Incubation, Sofina Group, and Lupa Systems. VerSe Innovation back then become the first Indian unicorn in the local languages tech space.

The company will use the funding in scaling up the growth of its exiting video-sharing platform Josh, which currently has more than 50 million downloads on the play store. To date, VerSe Innovation has raised over $434 million in funding.

“This will include the augmentation of local language content offerings, the development of its content creator ecosystem, innovation in AI and ML, and more importantly, creation of opportunity for India’s vast talent pool,” the company mentioned in the press statement. 

Founded in 2009 by Umesh Kulkarni and Chandrashekhar Sohoni, Ver Se’ Innovation Pvt. Ltd., which acquired Dailyhunt (formerly Newshunt) in 2012, offers news in 14 different languages from multiple content providers. It also owns and operates Josh, a short video sharing app, which gained massive popularity after the TikTok ban.

With over 85 million monthly active users (MAU), 40 million daily active users, and 1.5+ billion plays per day, Josh is one of the leading and most-engaged short video sharing apps in the country, the company claimed.

VerSe Innovation aims to make Josh the largest local language video-sharing platform in the country by FY25. BS reported.

While the company also claimed that Dailyhunt has over 80+ million monthly active users (MAU) providing news in 14 different vernacular languages from over 800 publication partners every day.

“This solid business foundation and capital infusion now set the Company on a path of rapid growth, as it explores building a family of apps and expanding across other international geographies to extend its broad-based tech platforms in serving similar unmet content needs of local language audiences globally,” the company added in the statement.

VerSe Innovation is funded by global investors including Lupa Systems, Google, Microsoft, Sofina, Alphawave, Falcon Edge, B Capital Group, Bytedance, Advent Capital, Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital, Innoven Capital, Omidyar Network, among others.

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