- Indian unicorn forays into Middle East and North Africa markets with a headquarters in Dubai.
- Dailyhunt is now available to users in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait.
- Co-founder says the startup is well capitalised and in no need to raise more capital soon.
- Startup aims to net $100m in revenues from Middle East and North Africa.
- Expects 50% year-on-year growth in group revenues from $127m last year.
VerSe Innovation, the parent company of India’s largest local language content discovery platform – Dailyhunt, is looking to launch an IPO in the next 18 to 24 months if things go all in the right direction, the company’s co-founder said in an exclusive to TechChannel News.
Umang Bedi, after foraying into the Middle East and North African markets, said that the company is well capitalised and is valued at $5 billion compared to $500 million two years ago.
“In April, we raised over $805 million, the largest fundraising by any startup in India. If we ever do raise more capital, it will be more for inorganic acquisition. However, as a company, we need to grow further and we will be looking at an IPO. It is very hard to time the market but in the next 18 to 24 months, we want to be ready for an IPO,” he said.
More focus on Josh and PublicVibe
Only Dailyhunt is making revenues now, he said and added that in the next two to two-and-a-half years, the other two apps – Josh and PublicVibe are expected to start making revenues in India.
“We will be focusing on Josh this year and PublicVibe next year. As we have grown as a company, we found that we can take our expertise to other parts of the world to cater to the readers and advertisers,” Bedi said.
The Bengaluru-based unicorn opened its regional headquarters in Dubai, focusing on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries for the time being.
“GCC is a tech-savvy region and home to 60 million people with an internet penetration rate of about 98 per cent. The region has high news consumption among the public due to different nationalities and there is a tremendous opportunity to tap into the unmet content needs of the Middle East market, given the rich linguistic diversity and an extensive news consumption behaviour of the market,” he said.
Moreover, he said that there is also strong growth potential in the advertising market.
From a monetisation perspective, he said that the GCC has around a $5 million ad market and the Mena has a $9 million market.
Eyes 45,000 publishers
In the Middle East, Dailyhunt will be available in the GCC, to begin with in English and Arabic languages and plans to add Farsi and Hebrew gradually and has no plans to bring Josh and PublicVibe to the GCC.
The startup has already added 5,000 content partners catering to the UAE market and plans to add another 45,000 content publishers in the next 18 months from the GCC.
Dailyhunt has 100,000 content partners in India in 15 languages with 350 million monthly active users and 110 million daily active users while Josh has 150 million monthly active users and 75 million daily users, and their third app – Publicvibe – was launched recently.
“Our goal is to get $100 million in revenues from this region. We are confident that we can achieve this as we have done it in the Indian market in 15 different languages.
Last year, our revenues from India were $127 million and expect to grow more than 50 per cent year-on-year this year,” Bedi said.
The next 12 months will be to add really good content on the platform in the Mena region, he said.
“Rome was not built in a day. So, we need to understand the regional culture and Arabic is the fourth largest language spoken globally. Once we get it right, then we will be expanding into other geographies,” he said.
The startup has no plans to open offices in other GCC countries but Bedi said that they always operate on an “asset light model” and even in India they have 2,500 employees and out of that 2,000 are located in Bengaluru and the rest in other two small offices in Mumbai and Delhi.
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