Exclusive: Dailyhunt’s parent expands its ESOP pool by $420 Mn

VerSe Innovation, the parent company of vernacular news aggregator Dailyhunt and maker of short video entertainment app Josh, has expanded its ESOP pool by adding fresh options.

The board at VerSe Innovation has passed a special resolution to grant 5,95,121 employee stock options (ESOP) to the employees of its subsidiary companies, its regulatory filing filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) shows.

According to the filings, every option will be converted into equity shares. As per Fintrackr’s estimates, the newly added ESOP options are worth around $420 million.

VerSe was valued at $5 billion after raising a $805 million round in April this year. Besides raising top dollar, the firm also became one of the top loss-making startups in FY22. During the period, it recorded a nearly 45% surge in its revenue to Rs 965 crore in FY22 as compared to Rs 666 crore in FY21. The company reported a loss of Rs 2,563 crore in FY22 from Rs 808 crore in the preceding financial year.

Meanwhile, the company laid off 150 employees or 5% of its workforce citing the current economic climate.

Dailyhunt claims to serve over 350 million users every month (MAU) whereas the short video app Josh claims to have 139 million monthly active users as of April this year.