Virendra Gupta started Verse in 2007 to send mobile alerts on jobs, matrimony and property. In 2011 Verse acquired Newshunt, a news app created in 2009 as a Symbian app.
Phones of the time could not display Hindi and networks were slow. Gupta recalled to Entrepreneur India that reading messages in Hindi was tough in 2011. The team built its own rendering engine and a light app. The product was renamed Dailyhunt in 2015.
Sequoia India led a Series B in 2014 and ByteDance joined a 25 million dollar Series D in 2016. Umang Bedi came on as president in 2018. The Josh short-video app arrived in 2020. In April 2022 VerSe raised about 805 million dollars at a reported 5 billion dollar valuation.
FY25 operating revenue was 1,930 crore rupees. FY26 revenue fell 40 percent to 1,162 crore rupees, with a net loss of 699 crore rupees. A real-money gaming ban and lost livestream income hit ad revenue.