Indian News & Content App Dailyhunt Set to Expand into MENA Region
Parnerships with 5,000 content providers has been struck and there are plans to further expand its network by partnering with key local publishers, such as MENA Newswire, Al Khaleej & Gulf Today.
VerSe Innovation, an Indian-based local language technology provider, has announced the launch of its vernacular content platform, Dailyhunt, in the Middle East. With headquarters in Dubai, Dailyhunt is expanding to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait.
The tech unicorn has so far partnered with over 5,000 providers and plans to further expand its network by partnering with key local publishers, such as MENA Newswire, Al Khaleej, and Gulf Today among others.
The expansion comes as Josh, a VerSe Innovation short-video platform, raised $805 million in funding in April this year, which saw the company’s valuation rise to nearly $5 billion.
“We are aiming to address the unmet content needs of the market that demonstrates very similar, linguistically diverse audiences, as seen in the local language dominated market like India,” said Umang Bedi, Co-founder, VerSe Innovation in a statement. “News is a very high-interest category in the region, consumed on mobile–web and app. There is no incumbent large player in the local language space.”
With a population of over 54 million people across the GCC, and with their economies expected to expand by 5.9% this year, the Middle East is proving to be a key market for VerSe in growing its language platform.
Looking to the future, the company plans to roll out Dailyhunt to more countries in the MENA region, including Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Egypt and offer support languages like Hebrew, Farsi, and Arabic.
To date, Dailyhunt offers more than 1 million new content every day in 15 languages, and serves over 350 million monthly active users (MAUs) every month.
