Glance Turns Unicorn In Under Two Years With Funding From Google

Glance, owned by adtech unicorn InMobi, has received a $145 Mn investment from Google and existing investor Mithril Capital. Glance owns and operates the Indian short-video content platform Roposo besides its own lock screen content product. 

In September, Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO of InMobi had said, “We believe the valuation of InMobi’s B2C business is certainly beyond that of a unicorn. And in the coming fundraise, it will definitely be valued over $1 Bn; we are clear about it.”

Tewari had said then that Glance would raise funds in the coming six months. It was reported at the time that the funding round could be worth up to $100 Mn. However, Glance hasn’t mentioned a unicorn valuation in its announcement for the Google investment.

Glance delivers AI-driven personalised content in multiple languages including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Bahasa on the lock screen of Android smartphones. The content includes trending news, across a range of categories such as entertainment, sports, fashion and news, and is delivered in a visually rich format. It claims to have 115 Mn daily active users (DAUs) who spend 25 minutes per day consuming Glance’s content. 

Roposo, which was acquired by Glance in November 2019, is one of the many short video content platforms in India, which gained prominence after Bytedance-owned TikTok was banned in the country in late-June this year. It claims to have 33 Mn monthly active users who spend 20 minutes daily consuming content across multiple genres in more than 10 languages. The Roposo app has more than 100 Mn downloads on the Google Play Store.

Glance will use the new investment to deepen its AI capabilities across Glance and Roposo, expand its technology team, launch services on the platform, further strengthen the brand and drive expansion in global markets.

“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, VP, Google. 

“Still too many Indians have trouble finding content to read or services they can use confidently, in their own language. And this significantly limits the value of the internet for them, particularly at a time like this when the internet is the lifeline of so many people. This investment underlines our strong belief in working with India’s innovative startups towards the shared goal of building a truly inclusive digital economy that will benefit everyone.”