Local language tech platform VerSe Innovation raises $450 mn

India's largest local language technology platform VerSe Innovation on Thursday announced it has raised more than $450 million from marquee global investors Siguler Guff, Baillie Gifford, affiliates of Carlyle Asia Partners Growth II and others.
The company said the investment will be focused on strengthening its leadership position as the fastest growing local language AI-driven content platform in the country.

The multi-million-dollar investment follows a $200 million+ fund raise from Falcon Edge Capital via Alpha Wave Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Google, Microsoft and QIA in February this year, taking the total capital raise in the first half of 2021 to beyond $650 million.

The company has a local language creator base of over 50 million creators and its local language content ecosystem which experiences over 80 billion video plays per month.

VerSe Innovation's technology platform serves one out of every two internet users in the country across Josh, India's largest short video platform and ‘Dailyhunt', India's largest local language content platform.

The short-video app Josh has over 115 million MAUs (monthly active users) and more than 56 million DAUs (daily active users). Dailyhunt serves over 300 million users every month in 14 languages in the country.

VerSe said that existing investors Sofina Group, Qatar Investment Authority and BCap also participated in the new round, that helped more than double its valuation from its prior round five months ago.


"VerSe plans on both deepening and broadening its AI/ML and data science capabilities to further widen its leadership position across all user, engagement and retention metrics and drive further on monetisation," the company stressed.-IANS