Funding Alert

Josh Talks raises funding of $3.5 million in a round led by Ankur Capital

• ByStartupStory     |    May 10, 2022

Josh Talks, the regional content and upskilling platform announced that it raised $3.5 million in its fundraising round led by Ankur Capital. Other investors like Vijay Shekhar Sharma of PayTM, Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, Vineeta Singh of Sugar Cosmetics, Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo Rooms and Ankur Warikoo also took part in the round. The company earlier raised $1.5 million from the New York-based Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF). Its app has recorded over 3.2 million downloads since its launch and has more than 2,00,000 paid subscribers in both tier-II and tier-III cities of India. 

The company will use the funds to redefine its products with a broader goal of making Josh Skills the preferred social learning platform for India. Furthermore, the company would also experiment with the new product lines applying to the aspirations of this user segment. Supriya Paul, the CEO and co-founder of Josh Talks said that the company over the past two years has grown across 10 languages and created a product that monetises its distribution network. He also said that the company has been successful in understanding the aspirations of young India and has built one of the largest online communities. In addition to this, the company’s goal is to extend its offerings and strengthen the executive team and make Josh Talk a prominent name in every household he added.

The company added fresh content categories like Josh Money, which focused on the financial literacy for tier-II and tier-III city users along with Josh Maati which highlights the stories of agriculture and innovation from the villages of India. And also Josh Aasha which covered all the topics related to women. Paul elaborated on the expansion plans of the company and said a part of the fund will be deployed towards educational categories and it will be further going to every district and dialect of India. The company would also start new channels in some districts of Bihar and Josh Bhojpuri in the next quarter.

Rema Subramanian, the co-founder and Managing Director of Ankur Capital also said that the team of Josh has always found solutions via first-principles reasoning. Their obsession with their users and fixing their problems is the thing which inspired us to partner with them. Josh Talks is focusing to clock a revenue of $4 million this fiscal year. It also reached a revenue of $1.5 million last financial year and this year it is also targeting to cross the 35 million subscribers mark with an increase in viewership to 195 million across all its channel by March 2023.

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