Bolo Indya raises USD 400,000 in funding from Inflection Point Ventures, others

Bolo Indya has raised USD 400,000 (about Rs 3 crore) in funding from Inflection Point Ventures and others that will be used to enhance tools for creators and strengthen the team, a top company official said. The latest infusion, which takes the total funding raised by the short video platform to about USD 1 million (about Rs 7.3 crore), also saw participation from existing investor Eagle10 Ventures.

"We are on the mission to leverage the amalgamation of passion, content and technology to empower every content creator of Bharat to go viral in the shortest span of time and be able to monetise by leveraging the social capital," Bolo Indya founder Varun Saxena told PTI. He added that the company is focussed on helping content creators develop short videos across interest areas in their local languages.

Bolo Indya has over 65 lakh users including 28 lakh creators, spread across 14 languages. The company intends to grow its user base to 1 crore by March, and 5 crore by December 2021. "The raised funds will be used to enhance our personalisation and recommendation engine, to further expand Bolo Meets and enhance tools to further empower the content creators during Bolo Meets sessions as well as to strengthen the team," Saxena said.

He added that short videos in local languages are expected to see the demand from over 80 million users by 2022, a major category witnessing strong growth like payments and e-commerce. "This is where Bolo Indya wants to bring in video commerce for personalised online services to build a product which adds contextual value to the time spent on the internet by regional language users," Saxena said.

Interestingly, a number of homegrown short-video apps like Moj (ShareChat), Roposo, Chingari and Josh (Dailyhunt) have seen downloads and usage zooming manifold after the ban of TikTok earlier this year. Platforms like YouTube and Instagram have also introduced short video formats to capture a share of the pie.

In May, Bolo Indya had started testing 'Bolo Meets' feature that allows creator partners to deliver specialised skill-based services (like astrology, teaching languages or dance etc) to their followers for a fee. The company charges a small percentage of this as platform fee. Bolo Indya aims to enable 1 lakh creators on its platform to offer this peer-to-peer commerce service, which will bring in about Rs 6-7 crore in revenue for the company by December next year.

"There is an exploding trend of short video consumption and content commerce in India. Their (Bolo Indya) engagement-first approach and focus on high user retention clearly makes them stand apart from the clutter in short video space," Inflection Point Ventures (IPV) co-founder Mitesh Shah said. He added that IPV will help Bolo Indya access a large unexplored market base and expand its network exponentially while enhancing tech capabilities as well.