Tech4Billion Media Pvt Ltd, which operates video-focussed social media platform Chingari, has raised $1.3 million (Rs 9.7 crore) in a seed funding round, according to reports.
The round in Bengaluru-based Chingari was led by AngelList India, with participation from investors including Utsav Somani’s iSeed, Village Global, LogX Ventures, and NowFloats co-founder Jasminder Singh Gulati, The Financial Express reported.
Chingari – set up last year – says users on its platform can create and share their WhatsApp status updates, as well as audio and video clips, GIF stickers, and photos.
The company says it pays content creators a 30% cut from what it makes from brands.
It will use the funding it has raised to hire talent with a focus on accelerating product development and scaling up its platform.
VCCircle has reached out to the company on the details of its seed fundraising round and will update this report accordingly.
“We never built the business thinking TikTok needs to be banned or will be banned. We had a growth plan before the ban and to co-exist with TikTok. We will continue doing the same,” company co-founder and chief executive officer Sumit Ghosh said.
Somani said he was confident of his investment because of Chingari’s leadership as well as its ability to ship products and features at an extremely fast pace. The company’s services are available in several languages including Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada and Punjabi.
The investment in the company also comes weeks after the Indian government banned 59 Chinese mobile applications and software service suites, including ByteDance-owned social video platform TikTok, in response to a border clash between the two countries in June.
Several other companies in this space have also raised funding in recent months. In July, social video platform MitronTV, raised Rs 2 crore ($267,658) in seed funding from investors including 3one4 Capital and a LetsVenture syndicate led by Arun Tadanki.
In March, lifestyle video service and community commerce platform Trell raised $4 million (around Rs 29.24 crore) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital accelerator Surge and Fosun Group investment arm Fosun RZ Capital.
