The app now claims to have more than 77 million monthly active users with over 1.5 billion video plays daily
Google, Microsoft, and AlphaWave, a unit of Falcon Edge Capital, have invested over $100 million in DailyHunt’s parent company VerSe Innovation.
The investment has come through for DailyHunt’s take on TikTok – the short video platform Josh.
The company also plans to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to scale up Josh.
Google, Microsoft and AlphaWave, a Falcon Edge Capital unit, have invested over $100 million in DailyHunt’s parent company VerSe Innovation. With this, the company has crossed a valuation of over a billion dollars, making it the latest unicorn in India. The company claims to be “India’s first tech unicorn for local languages.”
The investment has come through for DailyHunt’s take on TikTok – the short video platform Josh. The news aggregator platform had launched Josh after the ban on TikTok in India, in 12 local Indian languages to capture the “Bharat” users, the term used for the next 200 million internet users in India.
Interestingly, the vision of Josh fits right into Google’s investment strategy for India. During the Google for India event, where the global tech giant announced a $10 billion investment plan for India, the company’s CEO Sundar Pichai had said that one of the four areas where they will invest is in companies “enabling affordable access and information for every Indian in their own language, whether it’s Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi or any other”.
DailyHunt, the content aggregation platform, counts Matrix Partners India, Sequoia Capital India, Falcon Edge Capital, Goldman Sachs as its existing investors. DailyHunt has over 300 million users, offering them content in local languages.
Monthly Active Users : 77 million
Daily Active Users : 36 million
Video plays per day : Over 1.5 billion
The company plans to use the funds to scale up its short video app Josh, develop its content creator ecosystem and double down on its Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning push.
The investment comes even as Dailyhunt appears to be restructuring its operations to diversify into multiple categories in the wake of the government's move to cap foreign investment in digital media firms at 26%, effective Oct. 31, 2021.
Founded in 2009 as News hunt, the Bengaluru-based content startup rebranded as Daily Hunt in 2015. It aggregates content from newspapers and websites in multiple Indian regional languages, including Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil and Bhojpuri.
Dailyhunt’s services also include original video content in Hindi and Telugu and free live TV streaming in multiple regional languages. The company claims its machine-learning technologies enable smart curation of content and tracks user preferences to deliver real-time and personalised content