VerSe Innovation raises $805 mn; valuation zooms to $5 bn

Local languages technology platform DailyHunt and short-video company, Josh’s parent, VerSe Innovation, has raised $805 million in a Series J funding round from marquee global investors including Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board (Ontario Teachers’), Luxor Capital, Sumeru Ventures and others. The fundraise comes at a $5 billion valuation, a significant jump from $3 billion valuation from August last year.
 
Existing investors Sofina Group, Baillie Gifford and others, as per an official statement, have also participated in the round. The $805 million investment follows close on the heels of over $650 million fundraise from Siguler Guff, Carlyle Group, Baillie Gifford, Falcon Edge Capital via Alpha Wave Ventures, Glade Brook Capital, Google, Microsoft and Qatar Investment Authority, taking the total capital to $1.5 billion.
 
VerSe said that the investment will be focused on strengthening the company’s leadership position as the largest, fastest growing local language AI driven content platform in the country.

The vernacular content company plans on both deepening and broadening its AI/ML and data science capabilities to further cement its leadership position across all user, engagement and retention metrics, drive deeper monetisation including influencers, e-commerce and live streaming and forays into Web3 experiences across its local language creator base of over 50 million creators as well as its local language content ecosystem, which experiences over 80 billion video plays per month.

Virendra Gupta Founder and Umang Bedi, co-founder, VerSe Innovation, said that the new partnerships will strengthen ability and leadership to deliver on their vision to build the largest AI powered local language content platform across a family of apps serving the next billion users.

“With a strategic focus on video content and building for India, we have seen explosive growth emerging from the next billion users coming out of regional India. This investment comes at a time when we’re on a path to further expand our offerings, monetisation models, deliver superlative Web 3.0 experiences for the globe and create an IPO scale business,” Gupta added.
 
“India’s digital content is experiencing phenomenal growth, and VerSe Innovation is well positioned to be one of the leaders in the fast-growing short video and local language content space,” said Frank Su, Managing Director, Head of Private Equity Asia, CPP Investments. “This investment aligns with our approach of providing strategic capital to industry leaders in India’s technology sector. We look forward to supporting the next phase of VerSe Innovation’s growth journey, which we believe will deliver strong risk-adjusted returns for the CPP Fund,” he added.

Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor to VerSe Innovation on the transaction.