Info Edge Venture Fund Will Invest In AR Rahman’s Qyuki

Noida-based Info Edge (India) Ltd, the parent company of the online job listing platform Naukri, on Monday (February 3) announced that it has invested in Mumbai-based media company, Qyuki via its newly launched venture fund.

The company, in a stock filing, said that IE Venture Fund I has entered into an agreement to invest $3.5 Mn in Qyuki Digital Media. The investment has been done via preference and debt funding.

For this, IE Fund has invested $2.5 Mn for 916,356 preference shares with a nominal value of INR 10 and $1 Mn via debentures worth INR 1000 each. With this investment, IE fund will hold 5.36% in Qyuki, however, this stake may go up with the conversion of debt.

It said that the investment will help Info Edge Venture fund to support and grow Qyuki’s business in India.

Founded in 2011 by Samir Bangara, AR Rahman and Shekhar Kapur, Qyuki is a data-driven new media company which discovers and invests in India’s most influential KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) to help them rapidly grow their audience, create content and launch scalable D2C brands.

Qyuki also has to its name several premium IPs like ARRived, a singing talent hunt show with AR Rahman as mentor and Jammin’, a collaboration-focused music show where legendary Bollywood composers and India’s top Internet icons create original tracks. In the English Music space, Qyuki launched NEXA Music, a nationwide talent hunt for English-language with India’s leading automaker Maruti.

Some of their other successful IPs include #HaqSeHipHop, a concert series, a podcast with Rolling Stone India, popular digital shows Be The Change with Faye D’Souza and AR’s Super 8, among many others. Qyuki also exclusively manages a host of talent across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

The company recorded revenue of INR 67.8 Cr in FY19, growing from INR 14.2 Cr in FY18.

Although Info Edge has launched its fund now, it has been backing startups in India for over a decade. Some of the notable startups in which Info Edge has invested in the past include food delivery unicorn Zomato, edtech platform Adda247, and digital ledger platform Khatabook.

Invest India projects the Indian media & entertainment industry to touch $34.8 Bn by 2021. It further states that the industry is projected to grow at a CAGR of 14% over the period 2016-2021, outshining the global average of 4.2% Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), with advertising revenue expected to increase at a CAGR of 15.3% during the same period.

According to DataLabs by Inc42, the media and entertainment sector recorded total funding of at $561.27 Mn in 2019, a decline of about 23% in the amount of funding in the sector from the previous year. This could be a temporary fall given that the market for media & entertainment startups is only growing with the wave of new Internet users and the rise of the regional language ecosystem.