SUMMARY
The funding round also saw participation from Accel, Stellaris, Sequoia Capital, CRED founder Kunal Shah, among others
Rigi will use the fresh funds to build tools for emerging categories of content creators and expand to newer geographies overseas
The platform, which helps creators, influencers and celebrities grow, manage and monetise their community, has raised $25 Mn till date
Rigi, a platform for content creators to monetise their communities, has raised INR 100 Cr (about $12.5 Mn) in a funding round led by venture capital firm Elevation Capital.
The round also saw participation from Accel, Stellaris, Sequoia Capital, and angel investors such as former Indian cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, CRED’s Kunal Shah, NoBroker’s Amit Kumar Agarwal, Country Delight’s Chakradhar Gade, social media influencer Sharan Hegde, among others.
Rigi, founded in October 2021 by BITS Pilani graduates Swapnil Saurav and Ananya Singhal, helps creators, influencers, and celebrities grow, manage, and monetise their community. It offers a suite of services to knowledge-based creators such as subscription-management tools for monetising via WhatsApp and Telegram.
The platform also helps creators offer paid one-to-one sessions, pre-recorded courses, and live webinars to their audience.
“We provide tech-based end-to-end solutions so content creators don’t have to worry about anything. They just have to focus on their content and everything else, Rigi will take care of via back-end tech,” Singhal said.
Rigi will use the fresh funds to build tools for emerging categories of content creators. Besides, the startup, which recently entered Indonesia, will also use the funding to expand to newer geographies overseas.
Explaining the revenue structure of Rigi, Singhal told Inc42 that the platform levies a fee of 5%-7% on the cumulative income earned by a content creator.
Currently, Rigi caters to the needs of over 10,000 content creators working across 30+ categories, including education, health, fitness, gaming and skill-training.
Sourav claimed that the platform has helped content creators increase their revenue 40X in the last one year. The startup is now targeting to grow its community of content creators to 50,000.
Rigi, which competes with the likes of Qoohoo, Cosmofeed and MoneyyApp, raised $10 Mn in April last year in its Series A funding round co-led by Accel India, Sequoia Capital India and Stellaris Venture Partners. In total, it has raised about $25 Mn till date.
According to a Future Market Insights report, India’s content creation market was pegged at $13.4 Bn in 2022 and is expected to grow to $47.2 Bn by 2032, expanding at a CAGR of 12.2%.
Consequently, startups focused on content creators are in high demand. On Tuesday (January 25), media platform JetSynthesys acquired a majority stake in former Twitter India head Manish Maheshwari’s content monetisation platform Fanory.
In October last year, content creator-focused commerce startup Wishlink also raised $3 Mn in a seed funding round led by Elevation Capital.
