Google joins $145m round for India's Glance

Glance describes the artificial intelligence-enabled Android service as “the world’s first screen zero platform” and “frictionless content” because users do not need to activate an app. Personalized videos, games, music, live events coverage, and shopping functions are automatically launched when a turned-off screen is touched.

There are currently more than 115 million daily active users who spend an average of 25 minutes a day on the platform. Content is available in several local languages, including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Bahasa.

“Glance is a great example of innovation solving for mobile-first and mobile-only consumption, serving content across many of India’s local languages,” Caesar Sengupta, a vice president at Google, said in a statement. “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 start-ups towards the shared goal of building a truly inclusive digital economy that will benefit everyone.”

Google is investing alongside Mithril Capital, a US-based VC firm launched by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel that provided a $45 million round last year. The fresh capital will support an expansion of the technology team, new service launches, and a marketing drive across Asia and the US.

Glance will also allocate some of the capital to an expansion of its Roposo app, a video-sharing and social media provider with 33 million monthly active users and content in more than 10 languages. Roposo has been downloaded more than 100 million times on the Google Play store.

Earlier this year, Google launched a INR750 billion ($10 billion) fund to make equity, operational, infrastructure, and ecosystem investments that increase the pace of digitization in India. The fund will be deployed over five to seven years, targeting local language IT, micro-businesses, and India-specific products and services in health, education, and agriculture.

In July, Google committed INR337.5 billion to India’s Jio Platforms and outlined plans to build a low-cost smart phone aimed at the mass market. Jio Platforms raised about $20 billion this year as part of plans to build out a comprehensive mobile and e-commerce ecosystem with fellow Reliance Industries subsidiary Reliance Retail.

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