Short-Videos App Josh Maker VerSe Innovation Raises $805 Mn in Funding from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board

VerSe Innovation Pvt, which owns and operate short video app Josh and local language content delivery platform 'Dailyhunt', has raised $805 million in funding, from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board along with participation from Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, Luxor Capital and Sumeru Ventures, said a report by Bloomberg Quint.

This round of funding of VerSe is said to be India’s largest venture capital round of this year, to date. Majority of funds raised, about $425 million, in VerSe Innovation Pvt.’s latest round, came from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

The fresh funds raised will be utlized to broaden the company's artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, using data science to boost user engagement and retention. The capital raised in latest round will also drive revenues through influencer-led commerce and live commerce.

Josh was launched a few months after TikTok was banned in India in year 2020. In the same year, VerSe Innovation raised over $100 million, which was followed by another $100 million fundraise from Google, Microsoft, AlphaWave.

Last year in August, the Bangalore-based VerSe has joined hands with computer vision company D-ID to introduce a new photo-to-video feature for its Josh app's users. This allowed Josh users to create videos from still photos, and add music. The users can animate their photos with three categories of movement such as funny, nostalgic, and dancing, as well as share the animated videos with followers.

Last year in March, Josh set up "Josh Studios", with the appointment of content creator Seher Bedi. Equipped with proprietary Studio Spaces, VR and AR tech, Josh Studios is to encourage creators and teach them digital marketing skills to help them produce content as they desire.

According to the company, Josh has 150 million monthly active users, while Dailyhunt has 350 million. Over 90% of the content on these two apps is in Indian languages.

According to Virendra Gupta, founder of VerSe, the company will be profitable within the next two or three years.

Verse Innovation gets Rs.100 crore from Sequoia Capital and others

Sequoia Capital India has emerged as the leader in the second round of funding of Bangalore based Verse Innovation, the company which owns the local language mobile platform NewsHunt known as 'Flipboard' of India. The company was able to raise more than 100 crore in its second round of funding.

The funding has apparently increased the value of the 7 year old startup to 900 crores. Some existing investors of the company like Omidyar Network and Matrix Partners India also took part in the funding round.

The investment has perfectly time itself with a phase where the demand for regional content has increased like never before due to the proliferation of low budget Smartphones. Both venture capital investors and startups had been waiting for such an opportunity for a long time and are betting big on it.

According to Virendra Gupta's statement, "The era of the real Indian Mobile Internet written and consumed in local language is just beginning". Virendra Gupta is the founder and chief Executive at Verse Innovation. He further added, "Our vision is to create a made for India platform and work closely with publishers, developers, OEMs and other ecosystem partners to digitize, distribute and monetize the consumption of local language".

The NewsHunt platform of the Bangalore startup has already climbed the popularity charts with 50 million plus installs. The platform has some 1.5 billion monthly pageviews and 14 million active monthly users. The company plans to increase this active user base to 100-200 million a month in the coming couple of years. As reported by Neilsen mobile metrics, NewsHunt is top mobile apps used in India, and is the only Indian application in the list.

The platform has content available in more than a dozen languages which include Tamil, Hindi and Bengali. This content is aggregated from over 100 magazines, newspapers and other publications. The company also has plans of taking the number of publishers on the platform to some 1,000 very soon. The platform also makes the users available with ebooks which has already seen over 4 million downloads in the past 6 months.

The company makes money and profits through advertisements and selling books on the platform. Ecommerce giants like Snapdeal, MakeMyTrip, BookMyShow and Flipkart etc. are among the esteemed advertisers on the platform.

According to Mohit Bhatnagar's statement to Economic Times, "As India moves from 100 million to 500 million smartphone user base, it is critical to bridge the gap of making available relevant content and applications for Indian language users". Mohit Bhatnagar is the Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India. He also added that Verse Innovation for now is the best placed to become the leading digital goods company.

Another flagship product of company is - iPayy, it's a carrier based billing platform, reaches 700M customers in India and provides a payment vehicle for digital goods and services. In a country where credit and debit card penetration and usage is less than 2%, iPayy is the only viable mass payment instrument for mobile apps and content in India.

Verse Innovation was founded by Virendra Gupta in the year of 2007. The company initially dealt with mobile classified services like job alerts etc. till it acquired the NewsHunt platform in the year 2012.

Verse Innovation gets Rs.100 crore from Sequoia Capital and others

Sequoia Capital India has emerged as the leader in the second round of funding of Bangalore based Verse Innovation, the company which owns the local language mobile platform NewsHunt known as 'Flipboard' of India. The company was able to raise more than 100 crore in its second round of funding.

The funding has apparently increased the value of the 7 year old startup to 900 crores. Some existing investors of the company like Omidyar Network and Matrix Partners India also took part in the funding round.

The investment has perfectly time itself with a phase where the demand for regional content has increased like never before due to the proliferation of low budget Smartphones. Both venture capital investors and startups had been waiting for such an opportunity for a long time and are betting big on it.

According to Virendra Gupta's statement, "The era of the real Indian Mobile Internet written and consumed in local language is just beginning". Virendra Gupta is the founder and chief Executive at Verse Innovation. He further added, "Our vision is to create a made for India platform and work closely with publishers, developers, OEMs and other ecosystem partners to digitize, distribute and monetize the consumption of local language".

The NewsHunt platform of the Bangalore startup has already climbed the popularity charts with 50 million plus installs. The platform has some 1.5 billion monthly pageviews and 14 million active monthly users. The company plans to increase this active user base to 100-200 million a month in the coming couple of years. As reported by Neilsen mobile metrics, NewsHunt is top mobile apps used in India, and is the only Indian application in the list.

The platform has content available in more than a dozen languages which include Tamil, Hindi and Bengali. This content is aggregated from over 100 magazines, newspapers and other publications. The company also has plans of taking the number of publishers on the platform to some 1,000 very soon. The platform also makes the users available with ebooks which has already seen over 4 million downloads in the past 6 months.

The company makes money and profits through advertisements and selling books on the platform. Ecommerce giants like Snapdeal, MakeMyTrip, BookMyShow and Flipkart etc. are among the esteemed advertisers on the platform.

According to Mohit Bhatnagar's statement to Economic Times, "As India moves from 100 million to 500 million smartphone user base, it is critical to bridge the gap of making available relevant content and applications for Indian language users". Mohit Bhatnagar is the Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India. He also added that Verse Innovation for now is the best placed to become the leading digital goods company.

Another flagship product of company is - iPayy, it's a carrier based billing platform, reaches 700M customers in India and provides a payment vehicle for digital goods and services. In a country where credit and debit card penetration and usage is less than 2%, iPayy is the only viable mass payment instrument for mobile apps and content in India.

Verse Innovation was founded by Virendra Gupta in the year of 2007. The company initially dealt with mobile classified services like job alerts etc. till it acquired the NewsHunt platform in the year 2012.