Baillie Gifford Funds Slash Value Of Holdings In Dailyhunt Parent VerSe By Up To 80%

Two prominent investment funds managed by Edinburgh-based asset manager Baillie Gifford have slashed the holding value of their equity stakes in VerSe Innovation by approximately 80 percent across distinct reporting windows, according to regulatory filings reported by Inc42. VerSe Innovation is the Bengaluru-based parent entity of regional news aggregator Dailyhunt and short-form video network Josh.

The public portfolio updates from Pacific Horizon Investment Trust and The Schiehallion Fund highlight an aggressive recalibration of high-growth tech assets in late-stage private markets as companies encounter scrutiny over long-term monetisation models and operating burn rates.

According to the investment trust disclosures, Pacific Horizon reduced the recorded carrying value of its holding in VerSe Innovation to £4.08 million. This figure reflects a 51.4 percent year-over-year decline compared to the £8.39 million valuation marked twelve months earlier, and an overall drop of 80.3 percent from £20.69 million ($27.7 million) recorded in July 2024.

Simultaneously, The Schiehallion Fund marked down its direct holding in VerSe to $7.47 million, presenting a 78.2 percent plunge from the $34.31 million holding mark recorded in January 2025. Financial media analysis by The Economic Times noted that Schiehallion’s position accounted for roughly a 1.3 percent equity stake in VerSe. That assessment yields an implied valuation of approximately $576 million for the unicorn—down almost 90 percent from its peak private round mark of $5 billion set in April 2022.

These markdown disclosures represent the subjective fair-value accounting assessments of external asset managers rather than a new pricing consensus achieved through an equity transaction. VerSe Innovation completed its last primary financing event in April 2022, securing $805 million from institutional backers including Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and Luxor Capital, which cemented its $5 billion peak valuation.

In August 2024, wealth management firm 360 ONE marked its stake in VerSe down to an implied valuation of $2.9 billion, a 42 percent discount from the 2022 round, as reported by TechCrunch. At that time, VerSe representatives contested the metric, stating that third-party unilateral portfolio adjustments do not represent company-wide equity valuations agreed upon by market buyers, and reiterated that other prominent institutional backers retained carrying values aligned with previous funding terms.

Established in 2007 by Virendra Gupta and later co-led by Umang Bedi, VerSe Innovation has amassed nearly $1.7 billion in lifetime equity backing from corporate giants including Google, Microsoft, and Peak XV Partners. While the group experienced substantial traffic expansion across tier-2 and tier-3 Indian markets through Dailyhunt and Josh following the 2020 regulatory restriction of TikTok, short-form video ecosystems have faced rising infrastructure server expenses alongside tight digital advertising budgets.

While fund documents do not dictate legally binding caps on private transactions, consecutive deep impairments by Baillie Gifford’s flagship crossover funds indicate that late-stage technology holdings face ongoing re-benchmarking against publicly traded peers.