POPxo, a community and digital media platform catering to young women, has today announced that it has raised $2.7 million in its Series B round of funding. The round was led by Japan-based GREE Ventures, along with the participation of its existing investors — Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures India.
With the new funding coming to the company, it will now use the fund for product development, and for featuring news items in different formats. It also plans to introduce new features that improve interactivity for the end user. The company is presently focusing on breaking even by the end of 2017.
A person aware of the matter told ET:
Among women-centric media startups, POPxo is definitely the one gaining a large amount of traction from women in metros, as well as those in smaller towns. They will focus more on monetisation through brand integration over subscriptions, since the latter doesn’t work well in India but their target is to break even soon.
Founded in March 2014 by Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom, the company claims to be having millions of readers on a monthly basis on its website. The targeted audience of POPxo is females aged 18 and 34, who’re interested in subjects such as fashion, beauty, and lifestyle.
The company has also increased its focus on writers and employees understanding and using data to determine which among the 500 stories that are published on a monthly basis go viral or are read enough, in order to increase the readership base.
It claims to have worked with more than 150 brands in the year 2016, ranging from Puma to Lakme and Tanishq. The platform will focus on increasing its brand integration strategy for improving monetisation.
POPxo had partnered with brands including 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.
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, those who are — have raised significant investment from investors.
