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We no longer have to wait for the newspaper to get the latest news, nor do we require to wait till we reach home and switch on the TV to know the breaking news. With mobile phones and fast and cheap internet services, news and information is now much easier to access. Wondering! Which Country App is Dailyhunt? It is an Indian native app with headquarters in Bangalore.
An entrepreneur, Virendra Gupta could foresee this situation even before it actually arrived, which led him to acquire Newshunt in 2012, which is currently known as Dailyhunt. Today Dailyhunt procures content from over 1000+ publishers and is getting much popularity as the content is available in 14 Indian regional languages. Lets have a look at the journey of this top Indian startup.
Dailyhunt became India's first tech unicorn focused on local languages, after its parent organization, VerSe Innovation received funding of over $100 million led by Google, Microsoft, and Falcon Edge’s Alpha Wave Incubation, at a valuation of more than $1 billion.
Get an Insight About Dailyhunt App, its Funding, Business Model, Competitiors, Growth, Founders etc., in the article ahead.
Dailyhunt - Company Highlights
| Startup Name | Dailyhunt |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Bangalore |
| Sector | Mobile, News |
| Founder | Virendra Gupta |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Parent Organization | Versé Innovation Pvt Ltd. |
| Valuation | over $1 Billion (as per January 2021's funding round) |
| Website | www.dailyhunt.com |
Dailyhunt - Latest News
About Dailyhunt and How it Works
Media and Entertainment Sector in India
Founders of Dailyhunt and team
How was Dailyhunt Started?
Dailyhunt - Business Model and Revenue Model
Dailyhunt - Competitors
Dailyhunt - Funding and Investors
Dailyhunt - Growth
Dailyhunt - Why are Losses Piling Up?
Dailyhunt - Mergers & Acquisitions
Dailyhunt - Partnership
Dailyhunt - Future Plans
Dailyhunt - FAQs
Niku Mandal
Dailyhunt - Latest News
June 24, 2021 - The total collections of Dailyhunt rises to Rs 310 cr in FY 20 from Rs 159.1 cr, which the company recorded at the end of FY 19. This sums up to around 95% surge in their revenues.
December 22, 2020 - Verse Innovation, the parent company of Dailyhunt, receives around $100 million from Google, Microsoft, and Alpha Wave Incubation. With this fresh fund in the company is looking forward to ramping up its short video app, Josh along with improving its content creator ecosystem and focus on adding other cutting-edge features driven by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
About Dailyhunt and How it Works
Dailyhunt is an Indian News and content aggregator application that provides local language content in 14 Indian languages which include major languages like Hindi, Kannada, and Marathi to name a few, from over 3000+ content providers.
It is one of the early entrants in the regional content space in the country. The interesting part is that the platform also offers short videos. This video content is sourced from organizations and stringers. Through its smart technology, the platform personalizes the content as per the user’s requirements.
From the nation's biggest news source to hyperlocal correspondents, it curates news that you will surely love to watch. Almost 90% of the users use the platform in regional languages. It has a user base of more than 285 million. The unique proposition is that users can browse the topics of their interest and also share news over different social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, and other social handles.
Media and Entertainment Sector in India
According to the PwC report, India’s Media and Entertainment sector are fairly expected to touch $45.1 billion by 2021, expanding at a CAGR of over 10.5%. The report also states that the segment has undergone substantial progress since 2016 when its valuation stood at $27.3 billion.
Rishabh Rathi
Founders of Dailyhunt and team
Dailyhunt founder and CEO, Virendra Gupta, is an IIT Bombay graduate. Before launching Daily hunt, Gupta was a Telecom Director at Trilogy and General Manager at Bharti Cellular Ltd.
In 2007, Dailyhunt owner Virendra started his venture Versé Innovation Pvt Ltd. which was as VAS (Value Added Services) startup that provided SMS alerts on job, matrimony, property, news, and education to subscribers from around the country. Later Versé Innovation Pvt Ltd pivoted from being a Value Added Services provider to become Daily hunt, an Indian app that serves news and content.
How was Dailyhunt Started?
The company was driven by a very strong mission of being the ideal Indian news platform to empower a billion Indians. Dailyhunt founder Virendra Gupta's VAS startup Versé Innovation Pvt Ltd. was running profitably, but yet he could foresee that soon VAS was about to lose its sheen. This led Virendra and his team to acquire the English and vernacular news aggregator Newshunt. Newshunt was renamed as Dailyhunt in 2015.
Dailyhunt - Business Model and Revenue Model
While Daily hunt is totally free for the users to read news, there are basically two sources from which the app earns revenue. With a huge user base, the major chunk of the revenue comes from displaying advertising. It also charges its users for reading and downloading books and magazines from the app.
They have two independent business models:
- Impressions Based (News): Tie-ups with large news media and publishing houses where-in Daily hunt shares the advertising revenue on the news screens with these players.
- Transactions Based (Books, Magazines, and Singles): Tie-ups with book and magazine publishers, wherein the platform acts as a distributor for these books, collects the revenue from the users and shares it with the publishers who in turn may share it with the authors.
Rishabh Rathi
Dailyhunt - Competitors
Though Daily hunt was one of the early entrants in the market, today it faces strong competition in the market. There are a lot of applications with different USP’s running for the first position in the market. These applications include Newsstand, Inshorts, Business Insider, FirstPost, NDTV to name only a few competitors of Dailyhunt.
Dailyhunt - Funding and Investors
Dailyhunt has raised a total of over $430 Million in funding to date. Their latest funding was raised by the Series H financing round from Qatar Investment Authority and Glade Brook Capital Partners that invested over $100 Million in the parent company of Dailyhunt, VerSe Innovation. This round makes Dailyhunt a recent entry to the Unicorn list.
It is moving fast to rework its ownership structure, after the Indian government, reiterated its decision of capping the foreign investment for digital media entities at 26% by October 2021.
| Date | Stage | Amount | Lead Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 12, 2021 | Series I | $450 million | Siguler Guff, Baillie Gifford and Carlyle Asia Partners |
| February 2021 | Series H | $100 million | Qatar Investment Authority and others |
| December 2020 | Series H | $100 Million | Google, Microsoft and Falcon Edge’s Alpha Wave Incubation |
| November 2020 | - | $10 Million) | B Capital Group |
| May 2020 | Series G | $35.6 million | Lupa India, ByteDance, Goldman Sachs |
| April 2020 | Series G | $23.5 million | Falcon Edge Capital, ByteDance |
| November 2019 | Secondary Market | - | ByteDance |
| August 2019 | Series F | $3 million | Goldman Sachs |
| May 2019 | Series F | $22 million | Sofina |
| January 2019 | Series E | ₹24.61 crore | Omidyar Network, Sequoia Capital, Renu Sehgal Trust |
| January 2019 | Venture Round | - | Equip Capital |
| September 2018 | Series E | $6 million | Falcon Edge Capital |
| October 2016 | Series D | $25 million | Byte Dance |
| February 2015 | Series C | $40 million | Falcon Capital |
| September 2014 | Series B | ₹100 million | Sequoia Capital India |
Investors include Falcon Edge, Goldman Sachs, Advent Management, Bytedance, Sofina, Omidyar Network, Sequoia Capital, Renu Sehgal Trust, and Equip Capital.
Parnas Ghosh
Dailyhunt - Growth
In July 2018, it added over 12 million net new monthly active users, and in August, it beat the previous month’s performance with the addition of 15 million net new monthly active users. Total monthly users on all platforms (Dailyhunt and OneIndia) put together as of September 2018 was 138 million, of which Dailyhunt accounted for 100 million. Moreover, the time spent per daily active user is over 27 minutes per person per day as reported at the end of 2018.
Dailyhunt has grown to serve over 300 million users every month and its short video app, Josh claims to grow its monthly active users (MAUs) to 115 million, and its daily active users (DAUs) to 56 million, as per August 14, 2021 reports.
Dailyhunt - Why are Losses Piling Up?
Dailyhunt attained unicorn status after the Google-led fundraising round in December 2020, and the Indian content and news aggregator platform is aiming to scale new horizons with the Chinese apps not yet to be unbanned anytime soon.
The Indian content and news aggregator platform has reportedly increased its operating revenue in FY20 where its total collections amounted to Rs 310 crore, which improved by 95% from Rs 159.1 crore in FY19. However, the company has simultaneously witnessed a surge in its total expenditure, which included:
- Advertisement and promotional expenditure - This rose by 74% from Rs 214.6 crore in FY19 to Rs 373 crore in FY20.
- Commissions to selling agents - The company distributed commissions amounting Rs 8.4 crores to their selling agents.
- Expenditure on employee benefits - This witnessed a rise of 36%, from Rs 114 crore in FY19 to Rs 155.2 crore in FY20.
- Training and recruiting expenses - Additional amount of Rs 3 crore.
- Miscellaneous expenses - This surged 54.4%, from Rs 81.6 crore in FY20 to Rs 126 crore in FY21
- Legal and professional costs - Dailyhunt has to bear Rs 16.7 crore in the name of legal and other professional costs.
Going by the income-expenses of the company, Dailyhunt had to spend Rs 2.7 to earn a single rupee, which is a slight improvement from Rs 3 spent to gain Re 1, which the company exhibited at the end of the past financial year. The main reason for the losses that Dailyhunt is picking up is the rising costs of the company that needed to be curbed in the future. These expenses would continue to grow even in FY21 and FY22 due to Josh, the short-form video app launched by Dailyhunt, according to the experts. The reasons for the upcoming expenditures are mainly associated with the promotion and seamless integration of Josh, which is facing huge market competition from Moj, Roposo, and Takatak, belonging to ShareChat, InMobi, and MX respectively.
Dailyhunt - Partnership
In December 2020, Dailyhunt annnounced its partnership with Mzaalo. This will allow the dailyhunt users to get access to Mzaalo's content and also earn reward point. These points can later be redeemed to purchase products/services of brands in Mzaalo app.
Dailyhunt - Mergers & Acquisitions
- Daily hunt acquired image translator firm ImageTranslate in August 2019. Through this deal, ImageTranslate is expected to help in enriching its vernacular content with design and graphics.
- In June 2019, the startup acquired hyperlocal video content and news content application LocalPlay, which will help the site to stream video content in smaller towns. This deal will also enable the local businessmen to advertise on the platform to target consumers in their area.
- In July 2015, Daily hunt acquired Buyt.In, a search engine that enables its users to discover, compare, and purchase products from a range of e-commerce portals.
Dailyhunt - Future Plans
Dailyhunt plans to reach 600 of 725 districts of India from its current presence in 400 districts.
“For the next 10 years, we are going to be all about Bharat or India that does not speak English to take to consumption in a big way with smartphones", says the founder and CEO of Dailyhunt, Virendra Gupta.
Dailyhunt - FAQs
Dailyhunt is from which country?
Dailyhunt originated from India but has Chinese Investors like ByteDance. The company has raised $25 million in its series D round of funding led by China's ByteDance.
Who is Dailyhunt app owner?
Dailyhunt's parent company is Verse Innovation. Its founder and CEO is Virendra Gupta.
What languages does Dailyhunt support?
Dailyhunt has content in 14 Indian languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, English, Gujarati, Punjabi, Oriya, Bengali, Urdu, Nepali & Bhojpuri.
Author: Chayanika Goswami
Source : https://startuptalky.com/dailyhunt-news-app/
Date : 2021-08-14T06:22:00.000Z