Bengaluru: Eloelo, India’s leading live social entertainment platform, has raised INR 114.3 Cr ($13.5 million) in its Series B funding round, signaling a strong vote of confidence in the platform’s innovative, creator-led approach to digital entertainment. The round was led by Play Ventures, with continued participation from existing investors Kalaari Capital, MIXI Investments, Gameskraft Technologies, Griffin Gaming Partners, Waterbridge Ventures, Courtside Ventures, and Rocket Capital.
Commenting on the investment, Anton Backman, Partner at Play Ventures, said, “Play Ventures believes that next-generation social platforms built natively for mobile-first and video-first communities remains a massively untapped opportunity. We’re incredibly excited to partner with the Eloelo team as they pioneer a new category of interactive social entertainment for India and beyond. We’re seeing the convergence of creator-led content, real-time community engagement, and gamified social experiences reshaping how digital natives connect and express themselves. We believe Eloelo is at the forefront of this shift, bridging live streaming, gaming and culture in a way that’s uniquely local and globally scalable. As verticalized platforms continue to unbundle legacy social media, we see Eloelo carving out a powerful new category in the social entertainment landscape.”
Founded to serve as the “Digital Third Place for Bharat,” Eloelo fuses interactive live streams, gamification, and micro-payments to empower creators and connect communities in their native languages. The platform currently supports 8 Indian languages and enables creators to host live video and audio streams with AI-powered tools for community building, engagement, and monetization.
With this round, Eloelo has now raised over $50 million in total funding, following its $22 million Series A extension in September 2023. The company competes with platforms like Sharechat, Lokal, and Frnd in the rapidly growing social entertainment and live streaming sector.
Saurabh Pandey, Founder & CEO of Eloelo, stated, “Eloelo is bringing the ‘Social’ back in consumer social platforms at a time when most platforms are built for passive content viewing. We believe that feeling connected to others is a primary human need of belongingness, and we are solving that across 8 languages by connecting Indians over interactive livestreams with games, chat & virtual gifting to express their emotions. With close to 400 Million aspirational middle India consumers, we believe this is a massive underserved market which needs India-first solutions. Extremely proud of our team that has built a platform that handles large scale concurrency in live streams in 8+ languages along with building gen-AI tools to empower creators. The Series B round shows us the belief that our existing and new investors place on our vision and execution ability.”
Unlike traditional consumer platforms that rely heavily on advertising or subscription models, Eloelo operates ad-free and without paywalls, generating revenue through micro-payments and virtual gifting. Since launching monetization in May 2024, the platform has quickly scaled to a $23 million ARR (INR 200 crore) with over 1.5 million paying users.
Saurabh Pandey further added, “We switched on monetization in May 2024 after 2-3 years of building the platform capabilities and scaling rapidly to hit PMF. In less than a year of launch, we are now hitting a 200 crore Annual revenue run rate ($23M ARR) with 1.5 Million paying users and are one of the fastest growing platforms in India at this scale. Consumer Tech in India is going through a massive shift away from ad-first models to micro payments, and we are happy to be powering this shift. Gone are the days when India was the MAU farm of the world – we are here to prove that the Bharat-first models have massive monetization potential as we track towards a $60M run rate by end of this year. Beyond just numbers, the impact I am truly proud of at Eloelo is that more than 20,000 creators are now earning a livelihood by streaming and building their own digital communities.”
According to the Lumikai ‘State of India Interactive Media & Gaming Report’, India’s $25 billion media and entertainment market is rapidly transforming, with new media segments like esports, live streaming, and gaming now contributing over $12 billion, growing at a 16% CAGR.
With the latest capital infusion, Eloelo plans to invest further in generative AI use cases, expand to global Indian diaspora markets, and scale its monetization capabilities—positioning itself as a new-age media and entertainment powerhouse driven by culturally contextual content and real-time community engagement.
