Google is investing in two Indian startups, Glance and DailyHunt as Google has committed to invest $10 billion in India over the course of next few years. Prior to today, the company invested $4.5 billion from this fund in Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms.
Two-year-old Indian startup Glance, which serves news, media content, and games on the lock screen of over 100 million smartphones, has raised $145 million in a new financing round from Google and existing investor Mithril Partners. The new round values Glance at over $1 billion, making it a unicorn.
Glance, which is part of advertising giant InMobi Group, uses AI to offer personalized experience to its users. The service replaces the otherwise empty lock screen with locally relevant news, stories, and casual games. Late last year, InMobi acquired Roposo, a Gurgaon-headquartered startup, that has enabled it to introduce short-form videos on the platform. Google is also investing in Roposo.
Roposo is a short video platform with over 33 million monthly active users. These users spend about 20 minutes consuming content across multiple genres in more than 10 languages on the app everyday.
Glance ships pre-installed on several smartphone models. The subsidiary maintains tie-ups with nearly every top Android smartphone vendor including Xiaomi and Samsung, the two largest smartphone vendors in India. The service has amassed over 115 million daily active users.
Google said on Tuesday that it is also investing in VerSe Innovation, the parent firm of Indian startup DailyHunt. Across its apps including eponymous service and short-video platform Josh, DailyHunt claims to serve over 300 million users news and entertainment content in 14 Indian languages. The startup said it has completed a round of over $100 million from Google, Microsoft, and AlphaWave among other investors and this new round values it at over $1 billion, making it a unicorn.
DailyHunt — which is co-run by Umang Bedi, former Facebook India head — plans to deploy the fresh capital to scale Josh app, the augmentation of local language content offerings, the development of content creator ecosystem, innovation in AI and ML and the growth of its truly “made-in-Bharat-for-Bharat short-video platform,” it said.
Josh and Roposo are among over a dozen apps in India that are attempting to fill the void New Delhi created after banning TikTok in late June in the country.
