Dailyhunt, is an Indiancontent and news aggregator application based in Banglore, India that provides local language content in 14 Indian languages from over 3000+ content providers. Dailyhunt's parent company is Verse Innovation, which was founded in 2007 by Virendra Gupta. As of May 2020, Dailyhunt group had 330 million monthly active users. Over a period of 6 years, the Dailyhunt platform has reached 250 million monthly active users who spend an average of 24 minutes per day on it. Dailyhunt’s mission is to be ‘the Indic platform empowering a billion Indians to discover, consume and socialise with content that informs, enriches and entertains’. Understanding that India isn’t a predominantly English-speaking market, Dailyhunt aims at curating localised content for the people of India. It has been predicted by Goldman Sachs Group Inc to become one of "Indian billion dollar babies".
History
Dailyhunt was earlier called Newshunt, which was created in 2009 by two ex-Nokia employees Umesh Kulkarni and Chandrashekhar Sohoni. Soon after, the platform gained momentum and prominence in India as an app on Symbian where it received 18 million monthly pageviews in two years. Later in 2011, Newshunt became available on the Android platform. It was by that time that Virendra Gupta, founder of Verse acquired the application. Entrepreneur Virendra Gupta, better known as Viru, had started Verse in 2007 as a value-added service company. In 2011, he spotted Newshunt as a newly launched app and acquired it from its owners- Umesh and Chandrashekhar. Umesh became the CTO and stayed on to oversee its transition towards the smartphone era. Together, Virendra, Umesh, and the team catalyzed Dailyhunt’s explosion into a three-billion-pageviews heavyweight. In 2015, Viru renamed Newshunt as Dailyhunt since the name helped them expand their mission: To make it easier for people to enjoy best content, products and services in their language, on any device. In early 2018, Viru roped in Umang Bedi, former Managing Director of Facebook- India and South Asia to be the President of Dailyhunt and lead the business with him while focusing on making the benefits of the platform available to a larger audience. Later, the duo pivoted their aim to become India’s largest digital media business that would give consumers the ability to discover, consume, and socialize with content that is informative, entertaining, and engaging. An end of 2015 story reported Dailyhunt to be the largest Indian language distributor of e-books having 70,000 titles in ten languages. Dailyhunt is available on Android, IOS platforms and Microsoft Store
Funding
In September 2014, Dailyhunt closed its Series B funding of INR 100 million from Sequoia Capital India. The Series Cfunding round was led by Falcon Capital and was closed with $40 million in February 2015. In October 2016, the company received its Series D funding of $25 million from ByteDance and a Series E funding of $6.39 million from Falcon Edge Capital in September 2018. Additionally, Dailyhunt raised $3 Mn in a Series F funding round from Stonebridge Capital in August 2019. Other investors of Dailyhunt include Matrix Partners India, Omidyar Network, Goldman Sachs and Sofina.
Appointments
In February 2018, Umang Bedi, former Managing Director of Facebook- India and South Asia was appointed as the President of Dailyhunt. Recently in 2020, Bedi was elevated to the position of Co-founder of Dailyhunt.
Tie-ups and partnerships
In May 2020, Snapdeal partnered with Dailyhunt to add news content on marketplace. In March 2019, Discovery Communications India, the factual entertainment network entered into a multi-year partnership with Dailyhunt to showcase short-form content.
Advertising campaigns
Aur Kya Chal Raha Hai- Launched in October 2015, this digital campaign communicated about the rebranding exercise. It was in 2015 when Newshunt was renamed as Dailyhunt. News ka Daily Dose- Released on social media in September 2017, Dailyhunt’s News ka Daily Dose campaign showed how India reacts to news. The ad was targeted at the youth to help them get a better understanding of the content offered on the app. #HarBhashaEqual- Launched in August 2018, this highly innovative digital campaign highlighted our in-built bias against our vernacular languages and aimed at promoting language equality in India. #KhudKiSochBanao- Published on social media in March 2019 ahead of the General Elections, this film by Dailyhunt urges people to make their own opinions and not be parrots that repeat what's fed to them. #DailyhuntHaiNa- In August 2019, Dailyhunt announced its new multimedia campaign, ‘#DailyhuntHaiNa’ targeted at the millennials to get them hooked on to the unique benefits of Dailyhunt.
Awards and honors
In November 2018, Virendra Gupta, Founder & CEO, Dailyhunt and Umang Bedi, President, Dailyhunt were honoured with the exchange4media Influencer of the Year Award.
