Ex-Gaana CEO’s NFT Marketplace FanTiger Raises $5.5 Mn To Help Artists Create & Sell Music NFTs

NFT marketplace FanTiger has raised $5.5 Mn in a seed round led by Multicoin Capital.

Institutional investors including Krafton, Pravega Ventures, GAMA, Woodstock Fund, IOSG Ventures and Polygon participated in the seed round. Besides, the round saw participation from angel investors including Polygon cofounder Sandeep Nailwal, Gokul Rajaram, Prashant Malik (via Tykhe Block Ventures) and Miten Sampat.

Founded by Prashan Agrawal, ex-CEO of Gaana, and Krishna Singh, FanTiger allows independent artists to create and sell music NFTs on its marketplace and users to buy the said NFTs, allowing the artists to create one more revenue stream.

Prashan is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and ISB Hyderabad and was most recently the CEO of Gaana.com, the music streaming platform. He was also the cofounder of PropTiger.com, the property marketplace acquired by Singapore-based proptech company Elara Technologies.

The users can be a part of a community with the artist. Being in this community gives the NFT holders special privileges such as behind the scenes content, meet-n-greet opportunities, unreleased music and backstage access to concerts, among others.

FanTiger plans to use the funds to grow its team across product and tech, extend industry partnerships and onboard major artists.

Agrawal, CEO and cofounder of FanTiger, said, “The business of music should be to serve the best interests of Artists. With the advent of blockchain, music NFTs have the ability to disrupt the music industry structure, much like music streaming transformed music listening.”

The CEO added that the startup is looking to onboard 10 Mn users to its platform to own digital collectables and around 100K artists to create music NFTs.

“Music is one of the most exciting use cases for NFTs. Prashan’s exceptional track record as a repeat founder and music industry executive makes him the ideal person to transform the music industry in a way that empowers artists and their fans,” said Sandeep Nailwal, cofounder of Polygon.

FanTiger is yet to launch, but it has started a giveaway on its website offering 5,000 free NFTs to its early members.

Polygon has been a promoter and backer of web3 startups in the country since its inception. The blockchain scalability solutions provider raised $450 Mn in a funding round earlier this year.

In March 2022, Polygon, with Lumos Labs, announced the first cohort of 31 startups of its web3 accelerator program, PolygonLEAP 2021. The cohort consists of startups from Asia, North America, South America, Europe, and Oceania. Out of these, 18 are Indian startups, while the rest are international startups.

Recently, Polygon backed web3 notifications service Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS), participating in its Series A funding round worth $10.1 Mn.

NFTs have captured the imagination of not just the Indian users, but the celebrities alike, the latter of whom are looking at it as a potential revenue stream. In the music segment, AR Rahman and Sonu Nigam have joined hands with web3 companies to create NFTs. 

The two-time Oscar winner has dropped his NFTs on the Hedera Network, an NFT marketplace launched by the HBAR Foundation. Incidentally, HBAR will also compete with FanTiger as a direct competitor. On the other hand, Sonu Nigam has partnered with JetSynthesys, a digital entertainment startup, to launch NFTs targeted at the Indian diaspora living abroad.

BollyCoin, a Bollywood-focused NFT startup, launched its own NFT marketplace late last year, starting with the NFTs of Salman Khan.

Rario, an NFT startup focused on cricket, is tokenising important moments in cricketing history. The startup recently raised $120 Mn from Dream Capital, Alpha Wave and others to secure more rights to create more NFTs.

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Update | 25th May, 2:30 PM

Prashant Malik’s camp has informed Inc42 that he has invested in FanTiger via Tykhe Block Ventures, a venture capital fund that Malik founded. Changes have been made to reflect the same.