Google invested $145 million in InMobi’s social media startups called Glance and Roposo, both of the startups are Bengaluru based. This undoubtedly will strengthen India’s tech market keeping in mind that startups valued at a billion dollars or more have surfaced in India recently.
Google’s India Digitization Fund which has $100 million is the division responsible for this huge investment. Other than Google, Glance’s already existing investor called Mithril Partners is also investing in it.
Glance makes a lock-screen platform that helps the users see the content of their choice or personalized contents on the locked screen of their smartphones. It is an AI-driven lock feed platform that offers content in multiple Indian languages including Tamil, Telugu, Bahasa, Hindi, and English. The contents range from entertainment to sports, from news to fashion, in a visual format that is easy to view. So far Glance is only available for Android platforms. The investment will enable the platform to expand its technology team, launch new services on the platform, strengthen the brand, and inevitably expand its market across Asia and the U.S.
Caesar Sengupta, the Vice President at Google, pointed out that a lot of Indian users have trouble having access to relatable content in their own languages which, in turn, limits the value of the internet for them. To fill this gap the investment could be a step forward in the right direction.
Already Glance has more than 115 million daily active users who send at least 25 minutes per day on the platform making it one of the largest digital consumer platforms in the world.
Roposo, on the other hand, is a video-sharing social media platform that InMobi acquired back in November 2019. It has more than 33 million monthly active users who spend at least 20 minutes per day on the platform watching content in more than 10 languages. The Roposo app has been downloaded more than 103 million times on the Google Play Store as of November 2020.
