Google is investing in Glance and DailyHunt Indian start-ups
- Tech Backbone
On Tuesday, Google said it was investing in two Indian startups, Glance and DailyHunt, as the Android-maker is making another step into the second-largest internet market in the world.
A two-year-old Indian startup, Glance, which serves more than 100 million smartphones with news, media content and games on the lock screen, has raised $145 million in a new investment round from Google and current investor Mithril Partners.
Glance, which is part of the advertisement giant InMobi Community, uses AI to provide its customers with a tailored experience. With locally relevant news, stories and casual sports, the service fills the otherwise barren lock screen. InMobi acquired Roposo, a startup headquartered in Gurgaon, late last year, which allowed it to launch short-form videos on the web. Google is investing in Roposo as well.
With more than 33 million monthly active users, Roposo is a short-video website. Such users spend over 20 minutes on the app a day, accessing content spanning various genres in more than 10 languages.
Glance sails pre-installed on many mobile versions. The subsidiary establishes ties with almost every top Android smartphone supplier, including Xiaomi and Samsung, India's two biggest smartphone suppliers. The service has accumulated over 115 million active users a day.
"Glance is a great example of mobile-first and mobile-only consumer innovation, serving content across many of India's local languages," said Caesar Sengupta, Google's VP, in a tweet. Too many Indians also have difficulty seeking material to read or programmes in their own language that they can use comfortably. And this dramatically limits the importance of the internet for them, particularly because the internet is the lifeline of so many people at a time like this. This investment underlines our deep belief in partnering with ambitious start-ups in India and working towards the common aim of creating a fully sustainable digital economy for the good of everyone.
"Naveen Tewari, Glance and InMobi Company founder and chief executive, said the funding would pave the way for "a stronger Google-Glance relationship through product growth, infrastructure, and global business expansion." The startup aims to use the new capital to grow in the U.S.
Google investment in DailyHunt
On Tuesday, Google said that it is now investing in VerSe Innovation, the parent company of DailyHunt, an Indian startup. DailyHunt claims to represent more than 300 million users of news and entertainment content in 14 Indian languages through its platforms, including the eponymous site and short-video site Josh. The company said Google, Microsoft and AlphaWave, among other partners, have completed a round of more than $100 million, and this latest round rates it at over $1 billion, making it a unicorn.
DailyHunt, co-run by Umang Bedi, former head of Facebook India, plans to deploy the new capital to scale the Josh app, expand local language content offerings, grow the content developer community, AI and ML creativity and the creation of its genuinely "made-in-Bharat-for-Bharat short-video platform," it said.
Google is writing both of the India Digitization Fund's checks that it unveiled this year. Over the next five years, Google has promised to spend $10 billion in India. The corporation spent $4.5 billion in Indian telecom giant Jio Networks from this fund prior to today.
