The Indian version of TikTok, called Josh has raised more than $100 million from investor including Google and Microsoft. This development came months after the Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok was banned in India.
After the Indian government decided to ban TikTok amidst the India-China standoff in Ladakh, the number of short-video platforms in the country shot up in no time. This scenario created a void in the huge market of short-video based platforms and attracted global investors to pour in money on the home-grown apps.
Bengaluru-based VerSe Innovation, which owns Josh, is valued at more than $1 billion following the investment, it said in a statement.
Existing investors Sofina Group and Lupa Systems extended their holding in VerSe by investing further and so did AlphaWave, a part of global asset manager Falcon Edge Capital.
VerSe also owns news and content platform Dailyhunt, which offers content in multiple Indian languages.
Content-sharing platform ShareChat raised $40 million, for its new short-video app Moj from investors including Twitter Inc and Lightspeed Ventures.
According to data from Google Play Store, both Moj and Josh have been downloaded 50 million times each.
Separately on Tuesday, ad technology firm InMobi's Glance - which runs an eponymous lock-screen content app and short-video platform Roposo - said it had raised $145 million from Google and existing investor Mithril Capital.
Google set aside $10 billion earlier this year for digital investments in India.
