[2] The founders of the platform have promoted the app as the “Instagram for Bharat” referring to their focus on the Indian audience that speaks its own regional and state languages.
[2] Founders Virendra Gupta and Umang Bedi conceptualised Josh as a short-video platform that made content creation accessible to vernacular language users, essentially the non-English speaking audience in India.
[8] In December 2020, within 3 months of its launch, Josh's parent app VerSe Innovation raised more than $100 million from investors including Alphabet Inc's Google and Microsoft.
Investors included Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Siguler Guff, Baillie Gifford, Carlyle Asia Partners Growth II affiliates, and others.
The move came as an effort by the startup to strengthen their discovery initiatives on the platform and classify content at scale and understand the core behaviour of Indian regional audiences.