Entertainment platform NewsDog has raised around $50 million (Rs 335 crore) in a Series C round from Chinese Internet company Tencent, DHVC, Legend Capital and Dotc United Group.

The company said it plans to use the funds to pursue its vision of empowering individuals and professional content creators to showcase their work and reach the digital mass public. The company is adopting blockchain technology to grow faster and make the content ecosystem transparent.

NewsDog enables a personalised content feed for users, matching their preferences. It has over 50 million users, and is available in 10 local languages. It has launched a content platform called WeMedia allowing users to submit content. It has more than 30,000 writers contributing content regularly.

“The Indian digital content industry is just getting started. Poly culture and multiple languages make content matching an incredibly tough problem. We believe that strong machine learning capabilities will be pivotal in scaling content platforms in India.” says NewsDog’s Founder and CEO Forrest Chen, a Tsinghua University graduate and a successful serial entrepreneur.

NewsDog currently has two offices in India, in Pune and Gurugram, and plans to set up offices throughout the country in 2018. The contents aggregating app company aims at doubling its employee strength as it targets more Indian users.

The plan is to focus on two aspects — to create a dynamic content platform by enriching localised experience by adding more regional languages and to constantly buttress technical capabilities in order to provide users a more personalised experience, Chen said.

NewsDog is building a content ecosystem around text, image, and video. The app is tailor-made for low-cost smartphones, which accountf for the majority of smartphone sales in the country.

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