By Mugdha Variyar IST (Updated)
Mini
Google has invested in a $145 million funding round of InMobi subsidiary Glance, along with the existing investor, Mithril Capital, a global investment fund founded by Silicon Valley investors Peter Thiel and Ajay Royan.
Google has announced large bets, one in InMobi Group's Glance, a lock screen content platform, and another in DailyHunt's Josh, a short-video platform.
The funding comes from the $10 billion India Digitization Fund that was launched by Google CEO Sundar Pichai earlier this year.
Google has invested in a $145 million funding round of InMobi subsidiary Glance, along with the existing investor, Mithril Capital. Mithril Capital is a global investment fund founded by Silicon Valley investors Peter Thiel and Ajay Royan.
Google has also joined Microsoft and other investors in a $100 million round in VerSe Innovation, mainly to scale Josh. VerSe Innovation is the parent company of news aggregator platform DailyHunt. The funding also makes DailyHunt the newest unicorn.
“When we shared details of the India Digitization Fund in July this year, we identified enabling affordable access and information for every Indian in their language, whether it’s Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, and more as a key pillar to drive forward India’s digitization,” Caesar Sengupta, VP, Google, said in a blogpost.
“This is why we’re pleased to announce investments in leading Indian startups Glance Inmobi and VerSe Innovation, enabling them to further scale the availability of relevant and engaging content in different formats across various Indic languages. Glance Inmobi delivers visual, immersive, and localized content experiences across products like Glance and Roposo, while VerSe Innovation serves vernacular content in 14 languages through platforms like the Dailyhunt and Josh apps,” he added.
Glance offers AI-driven personalized content in multiple languages, including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu on the lock screen of Android smartphones.
InMobi claims Glance has 115 million daily active users that spend 25 minutes per day, while its short video platform Roposo has more than 33 million monthly active users.
Josh claims to have over 77 monthly active users, 36 million daily active users, and over 1.5 billion video plays per day.
First Published: IST
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