Glance, part of mobile-advertising company InMobi and owner of short-video platform Roposo, has raised $145 million (about Rs 1,070 crore) from Google and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel’s investment firm Mithril Capital.
The company said in a statement it will use the funding to deepen its artificial intelligence capability across Glance and Roposo, expand its technology team, launch services, strengthen the brand and expand in global markets.
Glance says it delivers AI-driven personalized content in multiple languages including English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu on the lock screen of Android smartphones. It claims to have 115 million daily active users. Roposo, the short-form video platform, has 33 million monthly active users who consume content in more than 10 languages.
“Glance is a great example of innovation solving for mobile-first and mobile-only consumption, serving content across many of India’s local languages,” said Caesar Sengupta, vice president, Google.
Ajay Royan, managing general partner and co-founder of Mithril Capital, said that Glance is “a powerful innovation to democratize content” on the mobile Internet.
The latest funding round comes more than a year after Mithril Capital invested $45 million in Glance as part of a larger financing round.
Glance had acquired Roposo last year. Roposo was set up in July 2014 by Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi graduates Mayank Bhangadia, Avinash Saxena and Kaushal Shubhank. It initially started out as a social network for fashion enthusiasts, before pivoting to a video-sharing mobile app in 2017.
Roposo had raised funding from venture capital investors Tiger Global, India Quotient and Bertelsmann India Investments. The investors exited Roposo when Glance acquired the company.