InMobi's Naveen Tewari's lock-screen content platform Glance has raised $145 million from Google and existing investor Mithril Capital, an investment fund of Peter Thiel. With this, Tewari has created a second unicorn after InMobi.
The company will use the new investment to deepen the AI capability across Glance and Roposo, expand the technology team, launch services on the platform, further strengthen the brand and drive expansion in global markets.
Glance is a subsidiary of InMobi Group and owner of video-sharing social media platform Roposo. It delivers content in five languages including English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu in India, and Bahasa in Indonesia. The platform now has 115 million daily active users, making it the third largest content platform in India.
Roposo is India’s leading short-form video platform with more than 33 million monthly active users who spend 20 minutes daily consuming content across multiple genres in more than 10 languages. The Roposo app has been downloaded more than 100 million times on the Google Play Store.
"Glance is a great example of innovation solving for mobile-first and mobile-only consumption, serving content across many of India’s local languages,” said Caesar Sengupta, VP, Google. “Still too many Indians have trouble finding content to read or services they can use confidently, in their own language. And this significantly limits the value of the internet for them, particularly at a time like this when the internet is the lifeline of so many people. This investment underlines our strong belief in working with India’s innovative startups towards the shared goal of building a truly inclusive digital economy that will benefit everyone," he added.
Interestingly, Google has also invested in Bengaluru-based VerSe Innovation Pvt Ltd which runs local language news and video app Dailyhunt.
"With two of the largest digital content platforms in the country, we have taken the lead in making the digital economy accessible for the next billion users in India and globally," said Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO of Glance and InMobi Group without commenting on the company's unicorn status.
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