New Delhi: On the mission to build the leading social live-streaming platform out of India, Bolo Live today announced that it has raised USD 2.4 million as a precursor to Series A, led by Orios Venture Partners. SOSV, Tremis Capital, LPA Ventures, and other HNIs also participated in its first VC round including existing investors Eagle 10 Ventures. This takes the total raised by the company to USD 3.5 million to date.
Launched in May 2019, Bolo Live straddles the unique amalgamation of live streaming, gamification, and microtransactions. They empower content creators to leverage the power of active engagement of live streaming and help democratize the monetization for content creators. Bolo Live empowers fans to connect, live chat, engage with and build communities with their favorite live streamers in their preferred languages.
The newly raised funds will be used to accelerate the product development, strengthen the team and accelerate penetration in both India and South Asia markets. Co-founded by second-time entrepreneur and NITIE alumnus Varun Saxena, and Delhi University alumna Tanmai Paul; Bolo Live recently had ex Co-Founder Pratilipi and BITS Pilani alumnus Prashant join the Bolo Live team as CTO.
Commenting on the announcement, Varun Saxena, Co-founder and CEO Bolo Live, said, “We are delighted to have Orios Venture Partners join us as our first institutional investors in our journey to build a large social live-streaming platform out of India. Their experience with world-class startups from India shall help us accelerate our path towards making Bolo Live a household name.”
“With the world looking at Indian content creators, there is no better time than this to build a microtransactions driven creator economy platform in India. We have witnessed high stickiness, driven by gamification and communities, and look forward to creating more value for all our users. We strongly believe that we are as good as the growth of live streamers on the platform, and hence we will continue to innovate on more monetization opportunities for our content creators and keep bringing them closer to their fan base.” he further added.
Commenting on the development, Rehan Yar Khan, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners said “There is an accelerating trend of live streaming and content commerce in India. Bolo Live team’s understanding, enthusiasm, the way they have built differentiation and are scaling it up in this competitive environment, drove our decision to invest in the brand. Their engagement first approaches and focus on high user retention clearly makes them stand apart in the growing social live streaming segment”.
With over 1 lakh content creators monetizing on the platform, and creator retention as high as 80%; Bolo Live has become the first choice of content creators who are looking to monetize content beyond brand partnerships. Bolo Live is that rare content app generating revenue and is already at more than 1 mn USD net revenue run rate. This, coupled with consistent growth inactive user base has led to over 3x increase in net revenue over the last 6 months.
