Short video app Josh’s parent VerSe Innovation raises Rs 728 cr

VerSe Innovation, the parent company of homegrown short video platform Josh, on Monday said it has raised over $100 million (nearly Rs 728 crore) in a Series H funding round.

The round was led by global investors Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar and Glade Brook Capital Partners.

Canaan Valley Capital and existing investor Sofina Group also participated in this round, VerSe Innovation said, adding that the new investment shows confidence of investors in the potential of Josh.

The multi-million-dollar investment follows close on the heels of over $100 million fund raise from Google, Microsoft and AlphaWave in December 2020.

VerSe Innovation, which became a unicorn last year, said it plans to deploy this capital steadily in the continued scaling up of Josh.

This will include the augmentation of local language content offerings, the development of its content creator ecosystem, innovation in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and creation of opportunity for India’s vast talent pool.

Josh claims to have over 85 million monthly active users, 40 million daily active users and 1.5+ billion video plays per day.

VerSe Innovation’s proprietary technology platform also powers various technology solutions, including users on Dailyhunt to consume content in their local language.

Dailyhunt is a vernacular content platform offering content artifacts every day in 14 languages.