SoftBank Group-backed advertising tech unicorn InMobi's business-to-consumer (B2C) unit Glance said it has made an undisclosed investment in talent management firm Collective Artists Network.
The companies said the investment will bring together Glance and Roposo’s scale, technology and monetisation capabilities, and Collective’s strength as a leading Indian pop-culture marketplace. The collaboration is expected to give Glance strategic access to India’s creators and celebrities.
With the scale, technology, and monetisation capabilities of Glance and Roposo, and Collective’s access to some of India’s leading talent across Cinema, OTT, television, music, sports, digital and regional industries, the two companies are now well-positioned to power India’s creator economy, a statement said.
This collaboration is expected to give Glance strategic access to India's top creators and celebrities while providing disruptive and sustainable monetisation opportunities for the country's entertainment talent.
Collective CEO Vijay Subramaniam said: “This is an innovative partnership in our business and with Glance’s scale and our large network this will provide a significant opportunity for the creator ecosystem.”
“This strategic investment in Collective Artists Network is a step in that direction and allows us to forge meaningful, long-term synergies within the creator ecosystem. Our vision is to enable creators to go from being just entertainers to ‘creator-preneurs’; be it through live entertainment content, or a variety of lucrative avenues for commerce, on both Glance and Roposo,” Piyush Shah, co-founder, InMobi Group, and president & COO of Glance, said.
Glance is a platform that delivers artificial intelligence-driven content right off the locked screen, or what it calls screen zero. The lock screen comes alive with new visual and interactive content that is personalised for customers when they lift their smartphones. The company said it has partnered with major Android phone makers in India to offer the screen zero experience.
In December last year, Glance had raised $145 million (about Rs 1,070 crore) from Google and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel’s investment firm Mithril Capital. Before this, it had raised $45 million from Mithril Capital.
Glance had acquired Roposo in 2019. Roposo was set up in July 2014 by Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi graduates Mayank Bhangadia, Avinash Saxena, and Kaushal Shubhank. It initially started as a social network for fashion enthusiasts, before pivoting to a video-sharing mobile app in 2017.