Massive job cut: Dailyhunt & Josh parent firm VerSe Innovation lays off 150 employees

New Delhi: VerSe Innovation, the parent company of Dailyhunt and short-form video platform Josh, has laid off nearly 150 employees in a bid to "streamline" its costs and teams. The layoffs impacted about 5 percent of a 3,000-strong workforce at VerSe Innovation, which in April raised $805 million from global investors, taking its valuation to $5 billion.

Sources told IANS that given the current economic climate, the company evaluated its strategic priorities, and conveyed the decision during a town hall meeting addressed by the company's co-founders, Virendra Gupta and Umang Bedi. ()

"Considering the long-term viability of the business and our people, we have taken steps to implement our regular bi-annual performance management cycle and made performance and business considerations to streamline our costs and our teams. This has impacted 5 per cent of our 3,000-strong workforce," according to a company statement issued on Monday. ()

VerSe Innovation has also reduced salaries by up to 11 per cent for employees who earn over Rs 10 lakh per annum, the sources added. VerSe Innovation registered a loss of Rs 2,563 crore in FY22, which increased from Rs 808 crore in FY21.

In June this year, the homegrown local language technology provider announced the launch of its vernacular content platform Dailyhunt in the Middle East region. Dailyhunt rolled out its offering in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait with its headquarters in Dubai, with over 5,000 content partners.

Bedi had told IANS that there is a growing opportunity in local language content globally that they aim to tap. Dailyhunt then offered more than 1 million new content every day in 15 languages, licensed and sourced from a creator ecosystem of over 50,000 content partners and a deep pool of over 50,000 creators.

It lastly served over 350 million monthly active users.