Dailyhunt and short video app Josh’s parent company VerSe Innovation announced that it raised $100 million in a Series H funding round on Monday, with the round led by sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). Other investors include Glade Brook Capital Partners, Canaan Valley Capital and Sofina Group, an existing investor. VerSe Innovation which became a unicorn last year, said it plans to deploy this capital steadily in the continued scaling up of Josh.
VerSe Innovation raised $100 million in December, from Google, Microsoft and AlphaWave in December 2020. Its existing investors include Goldman Sachs, Lupa Systems, Matrix Partners India, Sequoia Capital India, Falcon Edge Capital and Omidyar Network, among others.
This capital will be used to scale up Josh, the company’s short video platform — one of TikTok’s made-in-India competitors after the app was banned.
“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 said.
VerSe Innovation claimed Josh has been rated as the leading Indian short-video app in India on the Play store. According to the company, it has amassed over 85 million monthly active users, 40 million daily active users and 1.5+ billion video plays per day.
VerSe Innovation's proprietary technology platform also powers various technology solutions, including users on Dailyhunt to consume content in their local language. Dailyhunt is a vernacular content platform with content available in 14 languages.
“This solid business foundation and capital infusion now sets 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,” VerSe added.
Dailyhunt’s reach can be evidenced by Twitter announcing last month that it was partnering with the platform to bring Moments to the Indian social app.