VerSe Innovation, the parent company of news aggregator platform Dailyhunt, has denounced all recent allegations of the company faking business with UK-headquartered Builder.ai, which filed for insolvency in May amid a series of financial and legal troubles.
On May 30, Bloomberg reported that the social media unicorn was engaged in round-tripping with Builder.ai—the practice of transacting between two or more companies for the sole purpose of inflating revenue flow.
However, Umang Bedi, Co-founder of VerSe Innovation, said that these claims are “factually incorrect, baseless, defamatory, misleading, and without foundation.”
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In a conversation with YourStory, Bedi showed emails between VerSe Innovation and Builder.ai, invoices sent between the parties, as well as plans floated on project management and issue tracking tool Jira regarding projects the companies were involved in.
Over the past five years, VerSe Innovaton has engaged with Builder.ai for various services, including hyperscale cloud deployment, system migration, customised app development, and software solutions, spending cumulatively $80 million for these services.
At the same time, Builder.ai had also engaged VerSe Innovation for advertising services for its products and services resulting in a payment of Rs 5.3 crore to the company, it said in a statement. Builder.ai, which was backed by Microsoft and Qatar Investment Authority, enabled businesses to create custom applications without extensive coding knowledge using AI-powered solutions.
VerSe reported FY24 revenue of Rs 1,261 crore, down 13% compared with the year-ago period. In a conversation with The CapTable in April, Bedi cited a “sluggish advertising market” for the downturn.
However, the company has doubled down on its cost-cutting measures and terminated 350 employees in May to boost its bottom-line numbers. The company expects to close FY25 with 75% growth.
Bedi added that the company remains well-capitalised and is targeting to break even in the second half of this year.
Edited by Kanishk Singh
