Swirl Raises Funding To Help Brands Generate Sales Leads Via Video Content

Artificial intelligence-backed content commerce platform Swirl has secured $1.1 Mn (around INR 9.1 Cr) in a seed funding round led by Shastra VC, with participation from angel investors across India, Middle East and the US.

Swirl will deploy the fresh proceeds to grow its product teams with a particular focus on the US and the Middle East markets.

Founded in 2021 by Kaizad Hansotia and Bheshaj Joshi, Swirl is a video commerce platform that transforms short videos or live streams into shoppable content. 

Hansotia said, “We have already built a strong validation with global brands across India, Middle East and Europe. With the funding, we plan to enter the $100 Bn+ US and UAE market while strengthening our product suite.”

Currently, Swirl claims to have partnered with brands including Puma, VIVO, TVS, Arvind, Momstore, Homesrus, Gkhair and LG, among others with use cases spanning D2C, retail, auto, fintech, and several other major consumer categories. 

Swirl is working on the AI tool to extract contextual insights from videos at scale. According to the startup, such integrations elevate user engagement significantly, offering more personalised and relevant video content. 

“By harnessing the power of AI using video context metadata and LLM, Swirl will be able to drive quantifiable sales uplift, creating a seamless and personalised customer experience that is 10X better than what a user sees today,” said Joshi. 

The platform also plans to explore the potential of the video context metadata to refine and train a large language model (LLM) based chatbot that can be accessed from within the video itself that is being watched by the user. 

The funding announcement comes just a day after Swirl’s rival Wishlink secured $7 Mn in a Series A funding.