Bangalore-based Transversal Tech Pvt. Ltd, which operates video sharing app Clip, has raised $6 million (Rs 38.5 crore) in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firm Matrix Partners.
The startup, which focuses on vernacular language content, will use the funds to scale up its technology platform and expand the team, Clip co-founder and CEO Nav Agarwal told VCCircle in an e-mailed response to queries.
Existing investors India Quotient and Shunwei Capital also participated in the round.
Agarwal refused to divulge details of the startup's earlier funding rounds.
Separately, in a press note, Matrix India managing director Tarun Davda said video consumption in India has grown sharply, especially among the non-English speaking audience. “This section of internet users is growing the fastest and has thus far been starved of relevant content,” he said.
Clip was incorporated in December 2016 by Nav Agarwal, Swapnil Upadhyay and Ashish Gupta, but started operations in April this year. Its app is similar to YouTube in some aspects. It allows users to create, watch, download and share videos with entertaining content.
The platform allows for one-minute duration videos. It also has an integrated chat platform for enhancing social engagement. Besides, users can use the free video editing tool provided by the platform to apply popular themes, stickers and filters when they create the videos.
The platform started with Hindi but now also focuses on other vernacular languages that include Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Urdu, Malayalam and Punjabi, besides English.
“We are targeting the 90% of Indians that are untapped, those who have recently got smartphones and low-cost internet connections. We believe the real potential of local language content in India is still untapped,” Agarwal said in the press note.
According to the company, India is home to more than 250 million non-English speaking people. The company claims Clip has been downloaded more than 3 million times on the Google Play Store. It claims it has over 1 million users and half a million videos on the app.
Agarwal is an IIT Bombay graduate and had earlier co-founded logistics and supply chain startup Sendd, which was acquired by Craftsvilla for $5 million in 2016. Earlier, he had worked as an analyst for India Quotient.
Co-founder and chief technology officer Upadhyay is an IIT Kanpur alumnus and had earlier worked with the now-shuttered-down online homestay aggregator Stayzilla. The third co-founder and chief product officer Ashish Gupta is an IIT Kanpur graduate and had earlier worked as a software developer at Bengaluru-based Limitless Technology Ventures.
