Dailyhunt parent raises $450m from Carlyle, others, valuation doubles

Verse Innovation, the parent of news aggregator Dailyhunt and short video app Josh said on August 12 it has raised $450 million from Baillie Gifford, private equity giant Carlyle, Singular Guff, and others, indicating momentum in the Indian social media space.

Existing investors Sofina, Qatar Investment Authority, and B Capital also invested, doubling Verse’s valuation from five months ago, when it was valued at over a billion dollars. It did not disclose its exact valuation. The company has raised over $650 million in 2021, giving it ammunition to compete with ShareChat, which has also raised over $500 million this year and was valued at $2.8 billion last month.

“The investment will be focused on strengthening the Company’s leadership position as the largest, fastest-growing local language AI-driven content platform in the country. VerSe plans on both deepening and broadening its AI/ML and data science capabilities to further widen its leadership position across all user, engagement & retention metrics, drive further on monetization including e-Commerce & Live streaming,” the company said.

The ban on Chinese apps led by TikTok last year lead to a swathe of Indian equivalents launching similar short-video platforms, ShareChat’s Moj and Dailyhunt’s Josh among them. Josh currently has over 115 monthly active users and 56 million daily active users.

Its other platform Dailyhunt aggregates content from newspapers and websites and is available in 13 languages, including Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, and Bhojpuri.

It also offers original video content in Hindi and Telugu and a free live television streaming service in nine languages through strategic partnerships.

One of the earliest entrants in the regional content aggregation space, Dailyhunt, previously known as Newshunt, was founded by ex-Nokia employees Umesh Kulkarni and Chandrashekhar Sohoni in 2009.
Three years later, Virendra Gupta acquired the company and is now the chief executive. Former Facebook India head, Umang Bedi, joined the news aggregator in February 2018.