Creator Economy-Focused Data Platform Phyllo Raises $15 Mn For Product Development

Creator economy-focused data infra provider Phyllo has raised INR 120 Cr ($15.1 Mn) in its Series A funding round led by RTP Global along with Nexus Venture Partners, Better Capital, and iSeed. 

Angel investor Sima Gandhi, former head of business development and strategy at Plaid, Pat Shah from Audible, Ankur Nagpal from Teachable and Nakul Gupta from Coinbase also participated in the funding round. 

Phyllo, founded in May 2021 by Akhil Bhiwal, Achintya Gupta and Mohit Kumar, acts as a data gateway platform for the creator economy. It helps creator economy-focussed businesses gather data of creators or influencers, like name, number of followers, type of content, through a single application programming interface (API).

Explaining the startup’s model, Phyllo cofounder Bhiwal told Inc42 that it is a difficult task for creators to access data from different platforms. If a creator has to manage financials, then he/she has to compute revenue generated on Youtube, Shopify, Substack, and other platforms.

“We realised that creators can’t automate all information on a single platform and that’s why we thought of building an account aggregator platform like framework,” he added. 

Adding to this, Gupta said, “There are over 100 Mn creators across the globe, whose professional identity, work, income and other allied details are locked inside the creator economy platforms. They need to share this information to get better services.”

In essence, Phyllo helps creators share their data in a secured manner where they have control over what data they are sharing. It also facilitates creator economy-focused businesses by offering them a single API to gather creators’ data rather than integrating with multiple platforms. 

Phyllo plans to use the fresh capital for R&D and product development, ramping up sales and marketing activities, and expanding business. 

With the latest round, the amount of funding raised by Phyllo from investors has reached $17.75 Mn. It had bagged $2.5 Mn in seed funding from Nexus Venture Partners and other investors in 2021. 

India To Become An Export-Led Creator Economy 

India’s digital economy, which is estimated to touch the $800-Bn mark by 2030, is also playing a crucial role in shoring up the creator’s economy. 

Highlighting the importance of the digital economy, Bhiwal said, “The country’s digital infrastructure is advanced and thus, holds the potential to build an export-led creator economy. In some years, people will be creating digital assets in the form of NFTs and other allied assets, and exporting heavily across the globe.” 

To enable this, Phyllo is building APIs for creator economy-focussed brands. For accessing them, businesses need to pay for the number of APIs they use. 

“Essentially, Phyllo charges a brand when it subscribes to a creator’s data. The brand pays a certain amount of money to get that creator’s data across all platforms that he/she has subscribed to,” Gupta said, explaining the startup’s business model. 

Phyllo is looking to expand its coverage (accessing data from social media platforms) in the coming years. It currently has coverage over 20 platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok, among others. 

Phyllo offers its services to fintech platforms Jelly and Unacademy’s Graphy in India. Globally, its clients include Beacon, Karot, and Kofluence, among others.

It claims to have connected accounts of over 1,00,000 creators on its platform. Phyllo is seeing 5X quarter-on-quarter growth and 75% month-on-month growth, the startup said, adding that it aims to grow 90X in the next two years.

According to a report, India’s creator economy was pegged at $13.8 Bn in 2021. Moj, MX TakaTak, Josh and Roposo are among the prominent creator platforms in India. These platforms offer video content, audio content and other allied content creation services.