VerSe Innovation Raises Funding from Google, Microsoft and others for Short Video App Josh

VerSe Innovation, which owns and operates content aggregator app Dailyhunt, has secured over $100 million in funding from Falcon Edge Capital’s AlphaWave, Google, and Microsoft at a valuation of more than $1 billion. Verse is also known as the parent of a TikTok copycat – Josh app, a short-video app.

The app, Josh, is one of several home-grown short-video platforms that have sprung up since India blocked the wildly popular TikTok in June amidst a border crisis with China, attracting global investor interest in applications filling the gap.

The latest to join the unicorn tally in India, Dailyhunt’s existing investors Sofina Group and Lupa Systems also participated in the current round. The investment will be routed to the company’s short video app Josh that competes with MX TakaTak, Roposo, Moj Mitron, Trell, and Chingari and currently banned TikTok. The app is currently available in 12 Indian languages.

Bengaluru-based VerSe Innovation is valued at more than $1 billion following the investment, it said in a statement. AlphaWave, a part of global asset manager Falcon Edge Capital, also invested in VerSe, as did existing investors Sofina Group and Lupa Systems, VerSe said, adding that it would use the funds to scale up Josh.

In September, Indian content-sharing platform ShareChat raised $40 million from investors including Twitter Inc. and Lightspeed Ventures, in an effort to drive growth for its new short-video app Moj. Both Josh and Moj have been installed on more than 50 million devices each, according to data from Google's Play Store.

Google also separately announced the investment in VerSe, adding it had also invested in mobile advertising technology firm InMobi, which runs lock-screen content app Glance and short-video app Roposo. Google, which had set aside $10 billion for digital investments in India, did not provide any financial details for the investments.