Existing investors Matrix Partners India and Omidyar Network have also participated in this round.
Verse Innovation, the owner of local-language mobile platform NewsHunt, has raised more than Rs. 100 crore in its second round of funding led by Sequoia Capital India, as reported by PTI.
Existing investors Matrix Partners India and Omidyar Network have also participated in this round.
“The era of the real Indian mobile Internet written and consumed in local language is just beginning. Our vision is to create a made-for-India platform and work closely with publishers, developers, OEMs and other ecosystem partners to digitise, distribute and monetise the consumption of local language," Virendra Gupta, founder and Chief Executive, Verse Innovation told ET.
"As India moves from a 100 million to 500 million smartphone user base, it is critical to bridge the gap of making available relevant content and apps for Indian language users," said Mohit Bhatnagar, MD, Sequoia Capital.
By 2017, 385 million people will have smartphones, six times more than today with data consumption rising threefold and consumers buying five times more content, according to a recent report by AT Kearney and Google. The same report also stated that 93% of the time spent on video content consumption was in vernacular languages, indicating the demand for local language content.
Verse Innovation was founded in 2007 by Gupta, now 41, who hails from Jodhpur and did his masters in management from IIT Bombay's Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management. Gupta has worked in the mobile value-added-services industry for nearly two decades, at companies like Bharti Cellular and OnMobile. Verse initially focused on mobile classified services like job alerts, and then acquired NewsHunt in 2012.
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