Audio OTT Startup: Headfone raises $10 Mn in Series B funding round via Elevation Capital
- ByStartupStory | April 19, 2022
Headfone, an audio OTT startup, has raised about $10 Mn in Series B funding round led by Elevation Capital. Existing investor Hashed and new angel investors including Google’s Anshumani Ruddra, Hotstar’s Ajit Mohan, and comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath also participated in the round.
Headfone will be helped by the fresh capital in order to diversify content offerings across languages and expand into genres beyond comedy, health, kids, films and TV, education, social and culture, poetry, and religion and spirituality.
Headfone, founded in 2018 by Pratham Khandelwal and Yogesh Sharma, is a decentralised online platform where multiple artists such as writers, voice actors and sound engineers can collaborate with each other so as to create audio dramas. Currently, the platform offers content in Hindi.
Headfone has reported that as compared to INR 7000 per minute on other audio platforms, the cost of producing a content piece on the platform is INR 100 per minute. Also, to create an episode on the platform it takes 2-3 days.
To have 3 Mn monthly active users with 52 minutes as average daily time spent per active user on the app has further been claimed by the startup, Headfone. On the platform, there are a total of 800,000 content pieces, which has been growing for the past two years at a 10% CMGR.
Headfone raised INR 22 Cr ($3 Mn) as a part of its Series A funding round led by Hashed, in January 2021. A new investor Radish Fiction’s Seung Yoon Lee and existing investors including Axilor Ventures and Fosun RZ Capitals also participated in the round.
Headphone in July 2019, raised $750K in a seed funding round led by an affiliate of Fosun Group, Fosun RZ Capital.
Many Indian players including Kuku FM, Serial Box, Clubhouse, Khabri, and Pocket FM have entered into the OTT segment in recent times. The Indian audio streaming market comprises 200 Mn MAU, of whom just 1% are paid subscribers, according to a KPMG report on the media and entertainment industry.
While Statista report forecasts that in 2021, India’s audio OTT market was worth $600 Mn, and will grow up by 2025 to $1.1 Bn, and by 2030 to $2.5 Bn.
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