VerSe Innovation-which powers Dailyhunt, the country’s most read vernacular news aggregator, and Josh, a fast-growing short video platform-announced its latest move: the acquisition of digital marketing firm Valueleaf Group in a cash-and-equity deal. This will catapult the growth trajectory for VerSe, which now eyes an additional revenue of $100 million and a targeted EBITDA margin of 10% for fiscal year 2025, according to the official press statement.
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Accordingly, the press statement said that the combination of VerSe Innovation’s leading advertising technology stack and strong data management platform with the expertise of Valueleaf in performance data, deep integrations across the supply side, and solutioning for specific industries will lead to synergies that keep driving superior ROAS for advertisers.
Umang Bedi and Virendra Gupta, visionary co-founders of VerSe, said that they are very positive about this acquisition. Integration of Valueleaf Group’s data-driven insights with our cutting-edge ad tech platform would drive a manifold increase in ad efficiency and effectiveness, thereby opening up valuable partnerships with sustained revenue growth.
This latest acquisition follows VerSe’s strategic expansion into premium content through the acquisition of Magzter, the world’s largest digital newsstand with a huge library of more than 8,500 premium magazines and newspapers. With this, VerSe further consolidates its leadership position as India’s biggest digital media tech conglomerate that will offer a wide array of content and services to its fast-growing user base.
Dailyhunt is VerSe’s flagship product and has raised more than $1.5 billion in various funding rounds. In April 2022, the company was valued for $5 billion during its latest round of equity financing after raising $805 million led by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
Data from intelligence platform TheKredible shows that VerSe saw its overall revenue surge 57% year-on-year to Rs 1,809 crore in fiscal 2023, from Rs 1,151 crore in the previous fiscal. But it incurred losses of Rs 2,059 crore in the same fiscal, highlighting the challenges and opportunity components inherent in the evolving digital media world. VerSe has not shared its audited financial figures for FY 2024 as of now. Furthermore, many industry observers are also eager to see how the firm would monitor progress and performance in the subsequent quarters.
In summary, VerSe Innovation buys Valueleaf Group to ramp up ad potential, and expects dramatic increase in revenue with better ad efficiencies.
