Zorro Internet Pvt Ltd, which operates a pseudonymous social network, has raised $3.2 million (around Rs 24 crore) in a seed funding round led by 3one4 Capital and 9Unicorns Ventures with participation from Eximius Ventures, Roots Ventures and Venture Catalyst.
The round also saw participation from startup leaders and angel investors Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm Founder and chief), Ritesh Agarwal (Founder of OYO Rooms), Ashish Hemrajani (Founder of BookMyShow), Kunal Shah (founder of CRED) and Ankiti Bose (Founder of Zilingo).
Other investors including Ashneer Grover (BharatPe CEO and Founder), Lalit Keshre (Founder and CEO of Groww), Jitendra Gupta (Founder and CEO of Jupiter) and Gaurav Gupta (Co-Founder of Zomato), also participated in the fundraising alongside 15 unicorn founders.
“One key issue in this day and age is paid PR (public relations), paid tweets and even paid reviews. Often the truth is hidden on the 6th page of Google search results. Zorro is a pseudonymous social network, which is ring-fenced and content moderated. This gives you a clean and authentic timeline consisting of people from your network, sharing & consuming content freely. Moreover, we are fortunate to have some great founders on board, who bring a wealth of experience to the table,” Jasveer Singh co-founder and CEO of Zorro said.
“We will use the funds to build a strong tech team, with strong problem-solving skills that can build and scale a world-class product," Jasveer added.
Founded in 2021 by Jasveer Singh, Abhishek Asthana, and Deepak Kumar, Zorro is a social media platform where users can share personal stories, supposedly without revealing their identities.
Singh according to his LinkedIn profile is also co-founder of DotReview, a platform for founders to learn about investors before fundraising and to sharing their experiences anonymously. Asthana, popularly known as GabbbarSingh on Twitter and is also the founder of the advertising agency Ginger Monkey, Kumar is the chief technology officer and has over 7 years of experience building technologies at Inshorts, Paralleldots, and BlackBeltHelp.
Local homegrown social media networks such as Josh, Chingari, Koo, MX Takatak, Moj and others have received investor interest post banning of Bytedance-owned Tik Tok’s exit.
In May, microblogging platform Koo raised $30 million (about Rs 218.04 crore) in a Series B funding round led by global alternative investments firm Tiger Global Management. In August, Sharechat’s arch rival VerSe Innovation, parent of local language news aggregators Dailyhunt and short-form video app Josh, also raised $450 million.
Last month, VCCircle reported, Mohalla Tech, the parent company behind Moj and ShareChat, is in preliminary talks to raise $500-600 million as a part of a new fundraise.
Mint had first reported on 12 October that Sharechat was in talks to acquire Times Internet-owned MX TakaTak, citing sources.
The short-video category is set to become the second biggest segment in terms of time spent, after internet giants such as Facebook and Google, as per consulting firm RedSeer.
