The Internet's Local Flavour

Virendra Gupta wants his news aggregator platform Dailyhunt to continue with its focus on vernacular content in the pursuit of digital ad revenues—the elusive holy grail for online content providers

- Sayan Chakraborty

In 2011, much before high-speed wireless internet and smartphones became ubiquitous, Virendra Gupta, 46, was running a mobile value added services (VAS) startup with aplomb.

His four-year-old company Verse Innovation, which provided SMS alerts on jobs, property, matrimony, news and education to subscribers across India, Africa and Bangladesh, was growing profitably at a fast clip. In FY11, Verse’s revenue and profit doubled year-on-year to ₹35 crore and ₹11 crore, respectively.

But despite Verse being in the pink of health, Gupta was worried. His many years in the telecommunication industry—he started his career with Airtel in the mid-’90s—helped him foresee the end of days for VAS. The impending proliferation of smartphones and penetration of the internet would soon render the business redundant, he felt.

Under the circumstances, over the next few months, Gupta orchestrated the acquisition of Eterno Infotech, the owner of the English and vernacular news aggregator Newshunt, and renamed it Dailyhunt in 2015.

The shift to a consumer-facing internet business was a calculated move. Consumer internet was gradually finding a footing in India with patronage from venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners (both of which are investors in Verse), Tiger Global Management, IDG Ventures and Kalaari Capital, among others. Gupta and his partner Shailendra Singh were convinced about the benefits of jumping onto the consumer internet bandwagon, and their early investors OnMobile and Matrix Partners agreed.