VerSe Innovation to take over Magzter

Dailyhunt’s parent company, VerSe Innovation has declared its acquisition of Magzter, a cross-platform, self-service, global digital newsstand with a library of over 8,500 premium magazines and newspapers across 40+ categories and 60+ languages. It has presence in Amsterdam, London, Mexico City, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Singapore.

With this acquisition, VerSe Innovation marks its entry into super premium content. As per the company, the acquisition will also help in its journey to become India’s largest digital media tech conglomerate. The firm didn’t reveal the amount it spent on this acquisition.

Launched as Dailyhunt Premium, this subscription-based offering will provide users access to premium content from international publishers in over 60 languages including English, French, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and more. This includes global publications such as Time, Newsweek, Fortune, The Economist, Forbes, Reader’s Digest, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Maxim, Elle, Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Bazaar among others across their respective India and international editions. This expansion addresses the demand for high-quality premium content, particularly catering to the discerning tastes of India’s elite and aspirational upper-middle-class demographic.   

“In the last few years, we find ourselves in a privileged position where we serve over 350 million users. Together with that, we serve the educated, and mass affluent middle-class audience across 15 different local languages. VerSe’s revenue grew by 57 per cent to Rs 1,809 crore in FY23. For the last two years, Dailyhunt’s standalone as a business has been EBITDA positive,” said Umang Bedi, co-founder of VerSe Innovation, in an interview. “But one opportunity that we realized is that we were not serving the top-end audiences (about 20 million). For instance, three years ago, the IPL was free on Hotstar. About two years ago, they moved IPL behind the paywall, and they had about 15 million subscribers that paid about 1500 rupees a year for that subscription. We also have 10 percent of our users on the Play Store, who tell us to give them an ad-free experience and they are willing to pay for it. That is a very interesting cohort. This audience also consumes a lot of international content. So, about a year ago, we started talking to Magzter about the acquisition. We are focusing on the premium audience in India via high-quality content. We're also looking at a similar premium audience globally that exists in every market.”

According to the company, the acquisition strengthens its position as the largest platform for news and infotainment in the country, serving content in key international and regional languages. This will also help evolve the revenue model of Dailyhunt, from pure advertising to include a blend of subscription-based revenue streams.

Magzter was founded by global entrepreneurs - Girish Ramdas and Vijay Radhakrishnan and it enables magazine and newspaper publishers around the world to create and deliver digital editions of their titles to global consumers.  

Avendus was the exclusive financial advisor in this transaction.