Josh has more than 77 million monthly active users and 36 million daily active users, according to the company.
Verse Innovation, which owns and operates short video app Josh and 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. 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.
Apart from investing in Josh, the funding will be deployed towards the augmentation of local language content offerings, the development of content creator ecosystem, and innovation in AI and ML, the company said announcing the investment in a statement on Tuesday. The app currently has over 200 creators, 10 music labels, over 15 million user generated content (UGC) creators, etc. with more than 77 million monthly active users and 36 million daily active users, the company said. The app ‘plays’ over 1.5 billion videos per day.