Indian social media platform, Chingari, which rose to fame following the government’s ban on 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, has received seed funding of $1.3 million from AngelList, LogX Ventures, iSeed, Village Global and some others. The company says it will use the funds for hiring, accelerate product development, ramp up its platform and improve consumer engagement.
The company had won the Indian government’s Aatmanirbhar App Innovation challenge recently, in the social media space, with a prize money of ₹20 lakh. It announced the funding news two days after winning the challenge. According to the company, it has about 25 million downloads right now and 3 million daily active users. It pays 30% commissions of advertisements to its content creators right now.
Indian short video apps like Chingari and Mitron have risen to fame following the government’s ban on TikTok. Mitron raised ₹2 crore recently from 3One4 Capital and LetsVenture.
Both the apps emphasise that they have been developed in India and have gained from the void left by apps like TikTok, Helo, Bigo Live and Likee, which were all banned by the Indian government.
The ban has also started a race amongst Indian platforms to secure new funding and take advantage of the void. As reported earlier by Mint, Indian platform Sharechat is in talks with Microsoft for an investment of $100 million. Reports say that the InMobi-owned shot-video platform, Roposo, has also been looking to raise funds.
While Chingari’s funding is good news for the market, it could also be seen as a lack of confidence on Indian platforms from investors. In an earlier interaction with Mint, just over a month ago, founder Sumit Ghosh had said he had plans to skip the seed round and raise a Series A round directly.
Despite the short time frame for these platforms to raise funds, investors have also said that they will look at their retention metrics before backing them.
