Mumbai: Music licensing marketplace ‘Hoopr’ that allows video creators and businesses to license royalty-free music for their videos, ads, and films, has secured $1.5 Million in seed funding. The round was led by 9Unicorns and Venture Catalysts and saw participation from Inflection Point Ventures and 91Ventures. Marquee angels including Ashneer Grover (BharatPe), Anshoo Sharma (Magicpin), Sahil Barua (Delhivery), Giri Malpani, Anuraag Srivastava (Rainshine Entertainment), Pradyumna Agrawal (Temasek), and Vaibhav Karnavat also participated in the round.
The startup will utilize its newly acquired funds towards strengthening its tech offerings including an AI-powered engine that helps video creators find the right soundtrack for their videos in a matter of mere minutes. It will also utilize the funds towards building its library which comprises thousands of themes, songs, and sound effects geared towards individual creators, brands, agencies, and platforms.
For Hoopr, the round comes at a time when the creator economy is experiencing meteoric growth across the world and especially in India. With a market size estimated to be $104 Billion, over 50 million creators globally are creating content daily. Starting with sync licensing, a $3.7 Billion market worldwide, Hoopr plans to monetize various aspects of the creator economy, with a focus on Indian creators.
Hoopr is a part of the parent firm GSharp Media – a music-tech company started by Gaurav Dagaonkar, a well-known music producer and IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus and serial entrepreneur Meghna Mittal (ex- Hubilo, Yesssworks), that aims to build media-tech products. The company also plans to grow its IP offerings with the expansion of its content arm ‘Songfest’, which counts brands such as Mars Wrigley, Nestle, BharatPe, Hike, and Magicpin amongst its clients.
Hoopr aims to bring a revolution in the music industry by opening a new way of monetization for the music creators as well and democratizing the space by bringing the buyers on one platform. Through Hoopr, an independent artiste can now be discovered at a global level.
Speaking about the funding, Gaurav Dagaonkar, Co-founder and CEO of Hoopr said, “We’d like to thank our investors for their belief and conviction in us. At GSharp Media we believe in creating data and technology-driven products and brands that help creators. We will continue to invest in growing our library and building features on the Hoopr platform across the next 12 months. For me personally, the fact that Hoopr provides millions of music creators a new source of income is a very satisfying feeling.”
Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, co-founder, 9Unicorns & Venture Catalysts said, “Content creators, social media community builders and curators have been some of the exceptions that have witnessed additional growth fueled by the pandemic. Work-From-Home has enabled a lot of fence-sitters to join the creators’ bandwagon and generate a primary/secondary source of income. Given this backdrop, we envisage immense potential for Hoopr due to its royalty-free model which reaches to the grassroot level of the creator economy in India”.
Mitesh Shah, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Ventures says, “Hoopr is a marketplace for video creators which uses AI to help the creators find the perfect music for their videos. With huge market size and millions of users creating content daily, Hoopr has stepped in at the right time to monetize this space. We believe in the Founders and their tech expertise to lead this initiative, and we are sure our extensive network will be of immense help to them.”
