After raising funds by Google and Mithril Capital, Naveen Tewari’s Glance reaches valuation of over $1billion

Naveen Tewari’s Glance: Naveen Tewari, founder of India’s first unicorn, InMobi, has successfully brought his next venture GLANCE, a mobile content platform, to a valuation of over $1 billion. This was reached after funding round by Google and Mithril Capital was completed. 

Google, the Alphabet Inc unit, and billionaire Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital invested a hefty $145 million in Glance, the 18 month old startup. The app utilizes artificial intelligence to offer a personalized feed of news, entertainment, sports and video game content and then display it on the phone lock screens. 

Mithril Capital had also invested $45 million earlier in Glance. This raises the startup’s funds to $190 million. 

Glance Digital Experience Pvt is Bangalore headquartered and second unicorn by the InMobi’s founder, 43 year old Naveen Tewari, an MBA holder from Harvard Business School. Tewari said in a recent interview, “Glance marks an India-born innovation in the consumer internet space. Just as Google dominates search, YouTube rules video and WhatsApp is the messaging leader, Glance intends to dominate the lock screen.” 

Currently, Glance has 115 million daily users, with an average of 25 minutes on app per day. At present, Glance is available only on Android phones and has entered in partnership with other leading device makers like Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi and Vivo. 

By entering into partnership with Google, the app founders are aiming to soon launch the product in rest of Asia, and then eventually in the US. South America is the next target in 2021. 

In an interview to Bloomberg, Tewari said, “ByteDance has shown the world that the next generation mobile products are AI-based. Like ByteDance which dominated in China before going global, we are India leaders going global. Call it the Easternization of consumer AI technology.”

Glance offers personalized content through AI use in multiple languages, including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, on the lock screen of Android smartphones.