Unikon.ai Bags $2 Mn To Scale Up Its AI Social Media Platform

SUMMARY

The funding round saw participation from Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath, Peyush Bansal of Lenskart, Shiprocket’s Vishesh Khurana, Dholakia Ventures, among others

Unikon.ai is a social media and networking platform that leverages AI to offer 1:1 conversations to its users on diverse topics, and a personalised content feed

The development comes a month after Bella Vita cofounder Aakash Anand launched his venture studio, Wolfpack Labs, with a corpus of INR 50 Cr to back early-stage startups

Taking the entrepreneurial plunge yet again, Bella Vita cofounder Aakash Anand has announced the launch of his latest venture – Unikon.ai, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered social media platform.

The startup has also raised INR 16 Cr (about $2 Mn) in its seed funding round from multiple entrepreneurs and influencers.

The funding round saw participation from Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath, Peyush Bansal of Lenskart, Shiprocket’s Vishesh Khurana, Dholakia Ventures, OfBusiness’ Nitin Jain and Vasant Sridhar and Gaurav Khatri of Noise.

Among other participants in the round were influencers such as Tanmay Bhatt, Raj Shamani, Arjun Vaidya, Sharan Hegde, Ganeshprasad of Thinkschool, Shlok Shrivastava, and Rahul Malodia, Unikon.ai said in a statement.

However, there was no clarity on how the new startup plans to utilise the fresh funds.

Founded by Anand, along with ex-Zecpe (acquired by Cashree) CTO Sumit Jha and Palash Arneja, Unikon.ai is a social media and networking platform that leverages AI to offer 1:1 conversations to its users on diverse topics, and a personalised content feed.

The startup claims that its AI feature helps its users find the right individuals for consultations while helping them organise queries, webinars, and workshops to generate income. As per Unikon.ai, its users can control pricing and scheduling for one-on-one sessions via chat, audio, or video calls.

“… From my journey, I realised the immense value of meaningful connections and how they add value to an individual’s growth journey. By ensuring every piece of advice is compensated, Unikon.ai creates a thriving community where everyone benefits. It’s more than just a platform; it’s a movement towards better access and meaningful connections,” said Unikon.ai cofounder Anand.

The development comes a month after Anand launched his venture studio, Wolfpack Labs, with a corpus of INR 50 Cr to back idea-stage and early-stage startups.

Unikon.ai aims to solve gaps in the existing knowledge-sharing market, which is currently dominated by market analysis and research firms. The startup is looking to leverage AI to connect users to advisors for advice.

With this, Unikon.ai has become the latest startup to enter the Indian startup fray on the back of AI. Ever since ChatGPT introduced the world to GenAI, the homegrown startup landscape has been agog with activity. The emergence of the technology has spurred new use cases in areas such as customer service, banking, SaaS, among others.

As a result, the space has seen healthy investor interest in the past one year. As per Inc42, Indian GenAI startups raised more than $440 Mn in funding between 2019 and 2023.

While the GenAI pace continues to see rapid traction in the country, the fate of homegrown social media platforms has not been so good. Be it ShareChat or Koo or even Trell, most of the players in the homegrown social media space continue to grapple with challenges of monetisation and mounting losses.

That said, India continues to be a huge market for global social media giants such as Meta and Snapchat. It now remains to be seen whether Unikon.ai is able to make a dent in the space and create a niche for itself on the back of AI.