Short video platform Josh's parent acquires networking app GolBol

VerSe Innovation, which owns DailyHunt, acquired social networking application GolBol, to accelerate growth and scale its short video platform Josh.

GolBol’s team including co-founders Shanu Vivek, Karandeep Singh Gujral and Kaushik Mahato will work with Josh to accelerate the work being done to modernize and multiply the impact, the company said in a statement. The company launched Josh a year ago, right after TikTok was banned in the country.

Earlier the company had acquired AI-startup Cognirel Technologies and photo and video sharing app, Vebbler.

This marks the beginning of consolidation in the short video platform space. Mint earlier reported that ShareChat, which owns short video platform Moj, is in talks to buy MX TakaTak.

GolBol and Josh

GolBol, a social media platform, was launched in 2019 with an aim to connect Indian users in Indian languages like Hindi. Moneycontrol earlier reported that Josh had 166 million downloads and had 2.6 million daily active users.

According to the company, the GolBol team is well versed with the techniques that allow diverse users to socialise with digital content and will focus their efforts on enhancing Josh Cam, a mobile video editing app. “The team will also drive efficiencies in AI & ML to build UGC (user generated content) discovery initiatives that have the power to detect quality content from a stream of several thousand videos and classify these videos at scale so that users on Josh enjoy the latest, most unique and authentic content experiences,” the company said.

Shailendra Sharma, SVP Product & Engineering at VerSe Innovation, said, “VerSe’s clear growth strategy for Josh grounded in an entrepreneurial mindset has motivated this alliance with some of India’s brightest minds and passionate innovators who understand how Bharat consumes, creates and engages with content.”

Consolidation in the short videos space

This comes more than a year after the TikTok ban and the Indian short video platforms continue to struggle with Instagram Reels becoming a clear winner. According to Counterpoint research data, Instagram has 70 million daily active users, followed by Moj 14 million, TakaTak at 6 million and Josh at 2.6 million.

Monetisation is also a challenge and companies are yet to crack it. Neil Shah, Vice President – Research, Counterpoint Research, said in an earlier interaction that these platforms need millions of users to attract ads. A RedSeer analysis, which was shared at the event Ground Zero on June 30, pegged that a platform might require 100 million daily active users to build digital ad business at scale.

Abhinav Mohan, VP – Monetisation, Glance, which also owns short video app Roposo, explained during the recent event that India has low average revenue per user compared to countries in the West like the US or Europe. But daily active users in the country are high as many of them are from tier-2 and 3 cities, termed next billion users, are now on social media. It was largely made possible by accessibility to cheaper smartphones and data plans driving the need for vernacular content.

This is a huge market and also an opportunity, especially for the Indian firms focused on the regional language market, if they can get their monetisation model right. Tier-2 and other smaller towns account for about 60-65 percent of the short-form video market in India, according to a RedSeer report that pegged its size at $215 million.

If companies can crack how to monetise this huge market, by having different user experiences or content, this would be a huge opportunity, Mohan added.