Interactive livestreaming and auction platform Crater Club has raised $1.2 million as a part of its seed funding round led by Lumikai and LC Nueva Alternate Investment Fund (AIF).
Crater secured $500,000 from Lumikai and $700,000 from LC Nueva AIF, along with other strategic angel investors, the company said in a statement.
LC Nueva AIF is a category II AIF fund with LC Nueva Investment Partners LLP as its investment manager.
Crater offers livestreaming and auctions as a way for content creators and educators to interact with their audience by selling access to their exclusive content via auctions of tokens.
The platform also claimed that it is similar to Twitch and Loco and said it provides monetisasation opportunities for content creators and educators in fields such as stock trading, design, finance, marketing and career guidance.
Founded in 2020 by Vivan Puri and Vignesh Prasad, Crater.Club offers a platform for building professional communities and providing analytics for creators which give them insights on user behaviour.
“Today learning happens via courses and static video, which provide only a one-way format of communication and limited interactivity. We see streamers in the professional space, comprising stock traders, illustrators, brand marketers and advisors utilising the (crater.club) platform.
We aim to launch the auctions system by mid-Jan for creators and educators to monetise their audience while providing young millennials with a way to gain access to exclusive content and the creators and educators they follow,” both the founders said in a joint statement.
India’s livestreaming platforms are seeing a 100% on year growth in revenues, Crater Club said, while quoting a Lumikai report on gaming and interactive media.
The company also said that the report survey found that 17% of Indian audiences already pay for virtual gifting and tipping and 30% of total revenues for livestreaming platforms comes from virtual tipping.
The company said average order values in the country are in the range of $4 to $10.
“Legacy digital media platforms are ripe for disruption by introducing interactivity. Vivan and Vignesh are re-imagining the creator economy for professionals ground up to provide a completely new experience for professionals looking to manage and monetise their communities with a focus on authenticity”, said Justin Sriram Keeling, General Partner, Lumikai Fund.