More money for Indian Digital Media. POPxo, an online blog which churns out women-centric content, targeted specially at young women, has nabbed a fresh $2 million Series A round of funding from IDG Ventures India, Kalaari Capital and 500 Startups.
The company is now planning to use the money to expand its editorial operations in other languages, including English and Hindi. It will also launch new verticals and scale up video production.
It will also use the funding to integrate new features for its recently-released mobile applications. In the coming two years, the company will develop technology and will also increase its staff to more than 60 people from its current team of 25.
Founded in March 2014 by Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom, the company claims to be having about 3 million readers on monthly basis on its website. The targeted audience of the company is female between ages of 18 and 34, who are interested in subjects such as fashion, beauty and lifestyle.
More than 60 million Indian women are online and this number is expected to grow to about 300 million by 2020. Further, she stated:
We have expanded rapidly, adding a Hindi site, producing our own videos, releasing our mobile app, and massively expanding our social following across Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and all the platforms our audience cares about. This fundraise will enable us to continue our rapid growth and deliver on the faith our audience, our brand partners and our investors have shown in us.
Digital media has become a rising field, more importantly in recent times, if you consider the investment ecosystem. While there are still not many credible digital media platforms in different genres, at least in India — those who are — have indeed raised significant investment from investors, ready to back this upcoming and very interesting space.
POPxo has partnered with brands like Nike, Whisper, Tanishq, Motorola, TrulyMadly, Lakme, Chumbak, TIGI BedHead, Wills Lifestyle, Caratlane, Westside, Vero Moda, and Van Heusen. It is supported by well known angel investors like the Google India Head Rajan Anandan and CaratLane.com’s Mithun Sacheti.
