Dailyhunt, Josh parent raises $450 million at nearly $3 billion valuation

BENGALURU: VerSe Innovation, parent of local language news aggregators Dailyhunt and short-form video app Josh, has raised $450 million from marquee global investors including Siguler Guff, Baillie Gifford, affiliates of Carlyle Asia Partners Growth II and others.

With this, VerSe Innovation’s valuation stands at nearly $3 billion, said an individual aware of the discussions, requesting anonymity.

Existing investors Sofina Group, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and BCap also participated in the round which was a part of its new Series I fundraise. The round also provided secondary exits to employees and early stage investors of the company, the person cited above said.

This is the third major fundraise for VerSe Innovation in nine months, which has raised more than $650 million in equity funding since December last year. As a part of its previous Series H round, which concluded in February 2021, the Dailyhunt parent had raised more than $200 million from the likes of Falcon Edge Capital via Alpha Wave Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Google, Microsoft and QIA.

The current round was oversubscribed almost 2 times, as the company had set out to raise roughly $250 million as a part of this round, after it witnessed investor interest for its previous fund raise, said the person.

Avendus Capital was the financial advisor to VerSe Innovation on the transaction.

According to VerSe, funds will be used to consolidate its leadership position in the content space, as well as for deepening and broadening its artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science capabilities.

It will also enhance monetisation capabilities on its platform through introducing e-commerce and live streaming.

Recently, Mint reported that short-video apps are doubling down on the live-video streaming opportunity foray into the video-led commerce space, which allows them to open newer monetisation channels for their platforms and influencers.

In June, Glance, which operates video-platform Roposo, acquired social commerce platform, Shop101 to mark its entry into the influencer-led commerce space in the country.

Rivals, Sharechat parent’s Moj and Bolo Indya have launched live video streaming features. Towards the end of June, Mohalla Tech, the parent of ShareChat and Moj raised an additional $145 million as an extension to its Series F round, at a valuation of $2.88 billion.

The follow-on investment in VerSe represents the heightened investor interest in the social and video commerce space. VerSe claims to have a combined local language creator base of over 50 million, with over 80 billion video plays per month.

According to VerSe, Josh has over 115 million monthly active users, and more than 56 million daily active users. Dailyhunt currently serves over 300 million users every month offering content artifacts in 14 languages from a licensed creator ecosystem of over 100,000 content partners, the company said.

Mint reported in June that Moj had 47.78 million monthly active users (MAUs), followed by Times Internet’s MX TakaTak at 23.95 million, Dailyhunt’s Josh at 14 million and InMobi’s Roposo at 5.51 million, according to MAU data from digital intelligence platform SimilarWeb.