VerSe Innovation raises another $100 million from QIA, Glade Brook Capital Partners
Feb 08, 2021
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], February 8 : Local language technology platform VerSe Innovation said on Monday it has raised another 100 million dollars (about Rs 730 crore) in a series H funding round led by global investors Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Glade Brook Capital Partners.
Canaan Valley Capital and existing investor Sofina Group also participated in this round. The multi-million-dollar investment follows close on the heels of over 100 million dollars fund raise from Google, Microsoft and AlphaWave in December 2020.
Debuting as the first unicorn in tech for local languages last year, VerSe Innovation has seen investor interest in short video platform Josh since its launch.
With this new infusion of capital, the company is adding QIA and Glade Brook Capital Partners to the line up of existing blue-chip investors that include Google, Microsoft, AlphaWave, Goldman Sachs, Sofina Group, Lupa Systems, Matrix Partners India, Sequoia Capital India, Falcon Edge Capital and Omidyar Network.
Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor to VerSe Innovation on the transaction.
VerSe Innovation plans to deploy this capital steadily in the continued scaling up of made-in-Bharat-for-Bharat-by-Bharat-in-12-Bhartiya-languages-hosted-in-Bharat short video platform Josh.
This will include the augmentation of local language content offerings, the development of its content creator ecosystem, innovation in AI and ML and more importantly, creation of opportunity for India's vast talent pool, said the company.
It said Josh is currently the fastest growing and most engaged short-video app in India with over 85 million monthly active users, 40 million daily active users and 1.5 billion-plus video plays per day.
VerSe Innovation's platform also powers various technology solutions including 300 million users on Dailyhunt to consume content in their local language. Dailyhunt is a vernacular content platform offering content artifacts every day in 14 languages.
