Mumbai-based video content discovery platform Flickstree has raised Rs 3 crore (around $464,000) in a seed round of funding led by Venture Catalysts, a company statement said.
Former cricketer Sourav Ganguly, Kolkata-based Aditya Group's Anirban Aditya and Ankit Aditya, and Moksh Sports Ventures also participated in the round.
This marks Ganguly's first startup investment.
“Flickstree helps users follow their passion and create their personal video magazine. Such a model has the potential to change the way videos are consumed,” said Ganguly.
Founded by Saurabh Singh, Rahul Jain and Nagender Sangra in 2014, Flickstree offers curated and personalised free-to-watch videos on a single platform. Jain and Singh previously worked with Asian Paints, while Sangra was associated stock market software firm Premiere Trade and software firm Sangranet Technologies before launching the startup.
The platform, which was officially launched in August 2016, compiles free-to-watch online videos from social networks, media sites, and blogs and then creates a custom user video feed. The platform uses a proprietary self-learning engine to understand user context, predict user behaviour and suggest content that the user is likely to engage with. It aggregates legal movie streaming players, personalises recommendations, allows users to make wish lists so that they get notifications when the particular content is available, offers a movie calendar of upcoming movies, and curates movie reviews.
Flickstree has over 20 video categories that users can currently follow, and will add more categories.
“With so many content producers creating quality content, it becomes difficult for users to discover videos across multiple platforms. Flickstree is trying to organise video content from the free web for users," Singh said.
Last year, the startup was selected for Facebook’s FbStart programme, which is designed to help early-stage mobile startups build and grow their apps.
