Firework, a livestreaming commerce and digital transformation platform, on Tuesday said it has raised $150 million in Series B funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
“This investment will trigger accelerated growth across markets and particularly India,” said Firework’s chief revenue officer, Jeff Lucas, in a statement.
US-based Firework, operated by Loop Now Technologies, Inc, will hire across engineering, product and marketing teams and upgrade its platform in the near term with the freshly raised capital.
The long-term plan is to transform the digital landscape with its decentralized infrastructure on which companies can engage and transact with customers on their own properties and terms, it added.
The company's Series B funding round comes on the back of acquisition of prominent traditional and new age consumer companies as its customers in India such as ITC Foods, Sugar Cosmetics, Big Bazaar, Boat, Fab India, and The Man Company.
Sunil Nair, chief executive officer, Firework India, said in the statement that SoftBank Investment Advisers brings deep knowledge and expertise with years of experience in the direct-to-consumer (D2C) space.
Firework, which was founded in 2017 by Vincent Yang and Jerry Luk, helps its customers to build engaging video experiences on their owned and operated digital properties and across channels.
Linda Yu, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, noted that short videos and livestreaming are now the default language for the digital era.
“We believe Firework empowers businesses to use video to transform their websites into social and storytelling hubs so they can build deeper, long-term relationships with customers," added Yu.
Earlier this month, Masayoshi Son, CEO at SoftBank, one of the high-profile investors with bets on Indian companies such as Swiggy and Paytm, said it may cut its startup investments in this fiscal year ending March 2023. Son was speaking after announcing a historic loss of $26.5 billion at its Vision Funds for the fiscal year ended March 2022.
