DailyHunt VerSe Innovation has raised $805 million in its latest funding round. The fresh funding round was led by global investors Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board (Ontario Teachers’), Luxor Capital, Sumeru Ventures, and many more.
Some existing investors include Sofina Group and Baillie Gifford. In resultant, the parent company and local language technology platform VerSe Innovation’s valuation has reached $5 billion. This is one of the largest single fundraises by a startup this fiscal year. Avendus Capital acted as an exclusive financial advisor to VerSe Innovation in the round.
The investments will be used as the face of things like-
- strengthening the company’s leadership position,
- to scale it as the fastest-growing local language AI-driven content platform in the country,
- deepening and broadening its AI/ML and data science capabilities, engagement, and retention metrics.
Dailyhunt is recorded to have 350 million users every month, offering content artifacts every day in 15 languages from a licensed creator ecosystem of over 100,000 content partners and individual content creators.
EXECUTIVE OPINION:
"In the backdrop of capital markets dropping, and us raising $805 million at a valuation of $5 billion with marquee investors makes it special; most of these are long-term funds and have backed companies through multiple stages. The quality of the investors is exceptional. These are the single-largest cheque by CPP and OTPP. This validates the work and effort we have put in to build a strong business," said Umang Bedi.
"With COVID-19 and the rapid adoption of digital and mobile-first platforms, our business in the past 18 months has seen significant growth. In March 2020, we had one app; now we have Josh, India’s largest short video platform, and ‘Dailyhunt’, India’s largest local language content platform, coupled with ‘PublicVibe’, India’s fastest-growing hyperlocal video platform," added Umang.
