The popular parent news firm entertainment app daily hunt and shorts video app josh said it has raised the sum of $100 million as part of the H series financing round from Qatar Investment Authority and glade brook capital partner.
The announcement follows another $100 million+ investment the startup secured from Google, Alphawave, and Microsoft in December last year. That tranche of investment, also part of series H, had turned the entertainment news app daily hunt into a unicorn, giving it a valuation of a billion dollars or more. The startup has to date come up with the sum of $430 million dollars.
Daily hunt, own by the former Facebook India head umang Bedi, co-run by virendra Gupta, is a popular news and entertainment app that has more than 285 million users each day in 14 local languages in india.
The entertainment news app is the world’s second-largest internet market in india. This explain why Twitter last month partnered with the Indian firm to bring moments to dailyhunt.
The verse innovation expanded to short-form videos last year, with josh, after the ban of the popular social network use for sharing videos, which was originated in Beijing china in 2016 and created a theoretical void for snacking content in the country.
Scores of large giants and startup content in the country, including MX player and share chat have attempted to try their hand at short-form videos in recent quarters.
Josh appears to have ensued as one of the leading players, the startup says josh has amassed over 85 million monthly active users 40 million of whom check the app each day.
The startup says it is evaluating expansion into more categories and like with dailyhunt and josh, cater users in smaller cities and towns replicate this model in international markets.
Josh represent a confluence of India’s top 200+ best creators, the biggest music labels, 15+ million UGC creators best in class content creation tools, the hottest entertainment formats, and formidable user demographics Josh has been consistently rated as the leading Indian short video app in india on the play store, the startup said in a statement.
The startup is ready to deploy fresh capital to broaden its local languages and expand its creators ecosystem and AI and ML tech.