Google announced on Tuesday that it is providing funding to two India-based companies, Glance and DailyHunt, as the Android developer intensifies its efforts within the world’s second-largest internet market.

Glance, an Indian startup established two years ago, delivers news, media, and gaming content directly to the lock screens of over 100 million smartphones, and has secured $145 million in a new funding round led by Google alongside current investor Mithril Partners.

As a component of the advertising firm InMobi Group, Glance employs artificial intelligence to deliver a customized experience for each user. The platform transforms the typically blank lock screen into a dynamic space featuring localized news, stories, and easily accessible games. Late in the previous year, InMobi completed the acquisition of Roposo, a startup based in Gurgaon, which allowed for the integration of short-form video content onto the platform. Google is also making an investment in Roposo.

Roposo functions as a short-video platform boasting more than 33 million active users each month. These users dedicate approximately 20 minutes daily to viewing content spanning numerous categories in over 10 different languages through the application. 

Glance is pre-loaded on a variety of smartphone devices. The company has established partnerships with nearly all leading Android smartphone manufacturers, including industry leaders Xiaomi and Samsung, both prominent in the Indian market. The service currently has over 115 million daily active users.

“Glance represents a compelling instance of innovation focused on mobile-first and mobile-only usage, providing content in a multitude of India’s regional languages,” stated Caesar Sengupta, VP at Google, in a press release. “A significant number of individuals in India still encounter difficulties in locating content or services they can reliably use in their native language. This considerably restricts the internet’s potential benefits for them, especially now when it serves as a vital resource for so many. This investment demonstrates our firm conviction in collaborating with India’s pioneering startups to achieve the common objective of constructing a genuinely inclusive digital economy that will benefit all.” 

Naveen Tewari, the founder and CEO of both Glance and InMobi Group, indicated that the investment will facilitate a “strengthened collaboration between Google and Glance concerning product creation, infrastructure, and expansion into international markets.” The startup intends to utilize the newly acquired funds to broaden its reach into the U.S.

Investment in DailyHunt

Google announced on Tuesday a new investment in VerSe Innovation, the company behind the Indian startup DailyHunt. DailyHunt provides news and entertainment content to more than 300 million users through its various applications, including its primary service and the short-video platform Josh, in a total of 14 different Indian languages. The startup has recently secured over $100 million in funding from investors such as Google, Microsoft, and AlphaWave. This latest funding round has resulted in a valuation exceeding $1 billion, officially designating DailyHunt as a unicorn.

DailyHunt, which is jointly led by Umang Bedi, previously the head of Facebook India, intends to utilize these new funds to expand the Josh application, enhance its offerings of content in local languages, foster a thriving environment for content creators, advance its capabilities in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and further develop its short-video platform designed specifically for the Indian market.

Josh and Roposo are part of a growing number of applications in India that are working to address the gap left by the Indian government’s ban of TikTok in late June. Before the ban, India represented TikTok’s largest international market.

These investments are being made through Google’s India Digitization Fund, which was introduced earlier this year. Google has pledged to invest $10 billion in India over the coming years. Before this recent activity, the company had already invested $4.5 billion from this fund into Jio Platforms, a major Indian telecommunications company.