Josh an Indian social content firm has raised $805 million in funding, the country’s largest venture capital round this year. The company debuted its short video app four days after the authorities banned China’s TikTok.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board provided a little more than half of the money in VerSe Innovation Pvt’s Newest round, $425 million, the startup revealed on Wednesday. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, Luxor Capital, and Sumeru Ventures were among the other investors. Sofina Group and Baillie Gifford, two existing funders, also took part.
The business, which has raised $1.5 billion in the last year alone and is backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Google, is now valued at $5 billion. The Josh app, developed by a Bangalore-based business, is dubbed “Instagram for Bharat,” referring to non-English-speaking India outside of its half-dozen affluent top cities.
VerSe also owns and operates Dailyhunt, a local language content distribution platform that predates Josh and focuses on India’s “next billion” regional-language users. According to the firm, Josh has 150 million monthly active users, while Dailyhunt has 350 million. The two applications’ content is almost entirely in Indian languages.
After TikTok and a slew of other Chinese-origin apps were banned in June 2020, India’s short video companies exploded. Josh and its competitors, such as Roposo and Moj, have seen record user numbers, engagement, and revenue since then.
According to Bloomberg News, ShareChat, the parent company of Moj, is in talks to raise $200 million from investors including Temasek and Alphabet Inc’s Google at a $5 billion valuation.“VerSe will be profitable within the next two or three years,” said Virendra Gupta, the company’s creator.
VerSe will use the funds to expand its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, as well as to improve user engagement and retention through data science. Influencer-led commerce and live commerce will also be used to boost income.
Edited by Subbuthai Padma
Published by Iram Rizvi
