Google invests in DailyHunt and Indian startups Glance – Glean News

Google stated on Tuesday it’s investing in two Indian startups, Glance and DailyHunt, because the Android-maker makes furthermore push within the world’s moment largest web market.

Two-year-old Indian startup Glance, which serves news, media content, and video games on the lock display screen of over 100 million smartphones, has raised $145 million in a brand new financing spherical from Google and already investor Mithril Partners. The brand new spherical values Look at over $1 billion, an individual accustomed to the matter said, making the startup a unicorn.

Glance, which is an part of advertising big InMobi Group, makes use of AI to supply personalized expertise to its users. The service replaces the in any other case empty lock display with domestically related news, stories, and casual games. Late last year, InMobi acquired Roposo, a Gurgaon-headquartered startup, that has enabled it to introduce short-form movies on the platform. Google can be investing in Roposo.

Roposo is a short video platform with over 33 million monthly active users. These customers spend about 20 minutes consuming content material Throughout a number of genres in greater than 10 languages on the app everyday.

Glance ships pre-installed on a number of smartphone models. The subsidiary maintains tie-ups with practically each top Android smartphone vendor together with Xiaomi and Samsung, the 2 largest smartphone distributors in India. The service has amassed over 115 million Each day lively users.

“Glance is a great example of innovation solving for mobile-first and mobile-only consumption, serving content across many of India’s local languages,” said Caesar Sengupta, VP, Google, in a statement. “Still too many Indians have trouble finding content to read or services they can use confidently, in their own language. And this significantly limits the value of the internet for them, particularly at a time like this when the internet is the lifeline of so many people. This investment underlines our strong belief in working with India’s innovative startups and work towards the shared goal of building a truly inclusive digital economy that will benefit everyone.”

Naveen Tewari, founder and chief government of Look and InMobi Group, stated the Funding will pave the way in which for “deeper partnership between Google and Glance across product development, infrastructure, and global market expansion.” The startup plans to deploy the contemporary capital to increase within the U.S.

Investment in DailyHunt

Google stated on Tuesday that it’s also investing in VerSe Innovation, the father or mother agency of Indian startup DailyHunt. Throughout its apps together with eponymous service and short-video platform Josh, DailyHunt claims to serve over 300 million customers information and leisure content material in 14 Indian languages. The startup stated it has accomplished a spherical of over $100 million from Google, Microsoft, and AlphaWave amongst different traders and this new spherical values it at over $1 billion, making it a unicorn.

DailyHunt — which is co-run by Umang Bedi, former Fb Republic of india head — plans to deploy the contemporary capital to scale Josh app, the augmentation of native language content material offerings, the event of content material creator ecosystem, innovation in AI and ML and the expansion of its really “made-in-Bharat-for-Bharat short-video platform,” it said.

Josh and Roposo are amongst over a dozen apps in Bharat which might be making an attempt to fill the void New Delhi created later banning TikTok in behind June within the country. TikTok recognized Bharat as its greatest abroad market Previous to the ban.

Google is writing each these checks from Bharat Digitization Fund that it unveiled this year. Google has dedicated to speculate $10 billion in Bharat over the course of subsequent few years. Previous to today, the corporate invested $4.5 billion from this fund in Indian telecom big Jio Platforms.

Disclaimer: The views, suggestions, and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Glean News journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.

Source: https://www.gleannews.com/2020/12/22/google-invests-in-dailyhunt-and-indian-startups-glance/