Exclusive: Dailyhunt’s parent raises fresh funds at $3.1 Bn valuation

VerSe Innovation, the parent company of vernacular news aggregator Dailyhunt and maker of short video entertainment app Josh, has raised Rs 207.7 crore or close to $28 million from The Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board.

This is a part of Series I round in which the Bengaluru-based company had already raised $450 million led by Siguler Guff, Baillie Gifford and Carlyle Asia Partners in August last year. The company has raised around $678 million to date including the current tranche.

Vesre Innovation has approved the allotment of 10 Equity shares and 50,148 Series I preference shares to CPP Investment Board  at an issue price of Rs 41,283.5 per share to raise Rs 207.07 crore or close to $28 million, regulatory filings show.

As per Fintrackr’s estimates, the company has raised the fresh funds at a post money valuation of $3.1 billion, a little up from $3 billion during the last round. Following the allotment of fresh shares, VerSe Innovation’s promoters’ equity has been diluted to 21.46%.

Dailyhunt claims to serve over 350 million users every month whereas the short video app Josh claims to have 139 million monthly active users or MAUs and 68 million daily active users or DAUs.

In the news aggregation business, Dailyhunt competes with Inshorts while its short video app Josh competes with ShareChat’s Moj, MX TakaTak, YouTube Shorts among others.

Last month, Dailyhunt launched a video-only hyperlocal app called Publicvibe. Akin to InShort’s Public, the app provides updates across crime, politics, public issues, events in one’s location. Publicvibe appears to be a clone of Inshorts’ hyperlocal video-only app Public which is available in about a dozen local languages.

Entrackr had exclusively reported the development.

While VerSe Innovation is yet to file its annual financial statement for FY21, it had improved its financial performance in FY20 with revenue from operations growing 75.3% to Rs 267.6 crore. The company has recorded a revenue of Rs 152.7 crore in FY19.