Rigi, a platform that helps digital content creators monetize their audience, has raised Rs 100 crore ($12.3 million) led by Elevation Capital, with participation from Accel, Stellaris and Sequoia.
Marquee angel investors such as cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Kunal Shah of Cred, Amit Agarwal of NoBroker, Chakradhar Gade of Country Delight and creator Sharan Hegde among others also participated in the round.
Rigi, founded in 2021 by Swapnil Saurav and Ananya Singhal, provides tools to creators and influencers to grow, manage and monetize their communities through tools that help in subscription management, courses and workshop creation and integration with social platforms.
The company plans to use the funds to invest in engineering to build more tools, venture into more categories of tools and expand geographically in Southeast Asia, chief executive Saurav told VCCircle.
“We feel, in Southeast Asia, this product will work very well for creators,” he said, adding that the creators in geography replicate a behaviour similar to that in India. The startup has already started its operations in Indonesia.
The latest round comes about nine months after Rigi closed its $10 million-Series A round in April 2022. So far, the Bengaluru-based startup has raised $25 million in three rounds in 14 months since its inception.
The startup is the second venture of Saurav and Singhal, who are both alumni of BITS Pilani. They previously founded real-money gaming platform HalaPlay, which Nazara Technologies and Delta Corp acquired in 2020.
Rigi claims to have helped more than 10,000 creators across 30+ categories to monetise their audience through channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, paid courses among others. With the tools, creators can focus on scaling and engaging with their audience, instead of spending time on managing operations and creating technology.
“What excited us (about Rigi) was the holistic suite of products that a user could get,” said Mayank Khanduja, partner at Elevation Capital, adding that the tools are allowing creators to monetise the audience early in their journey.
Elevation has previously backed startups like ShareChat, Turnip and Headfone, all of which support the growing creator economy.
“Creator economy is a new paradigm of employment. But this is a nascent ecosystem. All creators need tools to be more efficient and to grow,” Prayank Swaroop, partner, Accel India, said in a statement.
