- The Indian short-form video app Mitron has raised $5 million in funding led by Nexus Venture Partners and has been dubbed as India ‘s response to TikTok.
The Indian short-form video app Mitron has raised $5 million in funding led by Nexus Venture Partners and has been dubbed as India ‘s response to TikTok. The round also saw participation on LetsVenture from established investors 3one4 Capital and from the private syndicate of Arun Tadanki.
A host of prominent angles and entrepreneurs such as Deep Kalra, Founder, and Chairman MakeMyTrip; Anand Chandrasekharan, Former Facebook Executive; Karan Bajwa, MD, Google Cloud India; Radhika Ghai, Co-Creator, ShopClues; Jiten Gupta, Creator, Jupiter; Shanti Mohan, Founder, LetsVenture; Amrish Rau, CEO, PineLabs; TK Kurien, Premji Invest; Manish Vij, and Harish Bahl, Smile Group also participated in the event.
The money will primarily be used for product creation, improved user interaction, and talent acquisition. It will also help the company embark on a content creator network and invest in the brand of the site.
In a press statement, Arun Tadanki said, “Mitron has made rapid progress in establishing itself as the primary choice in short-form video space and so we are doubling our investment”
The company will use the new capital infusion to speed up its product development to increase user engagement and recruit high-quality talent. The company also plans to embark on an extensive network of Indian content creators in the app and invest in the development of the Mitron brand
Pratik Poddar, Principal at Nexus Venture Partners, said in a statement, “Shivank and Anish are product-first, deep-tech and very iterative entrepreneurs. We’ve been following them for three months and enjoyed the way they’ve developed their thought around content development, community management, and video distribution. We love to back up entrepreneurs with ‘product and engineering first.’ Ultimately we assume the best product can succeed with long-term thought. The focus is on creating a high community of engagement and retention. And you can only be long-term creative partners.”
Talking to NBB, Shivank Agarwal (Founder, Mitron) said, ” We are planning to expand our team and develop our product. The funding will help us in making our community strong. We plan to make different community artists such as singers, poets, dancers, and many more. We will also focus on more talent acquisition and features within the app. We are committed to making Mitron a world-class product that is designed for Indian users.”
After the ban on 59 Chinese apps, Mitron became popular as a ‘Made in India’ app and, at the same time, TikTok’s rating fell to around two points. The software has faced its problems, however, with Google banning it from the Play Store “because of its ‘spam and limited features’ policy being violated.” But soon enough the app was back.
Mitron faces competition from many apps such as Chingari, Trell, Hotshots, MX Takatak, HiPi by Zee5, Roposo, and Reels of Instagram. It will interesting to see how the competition shapes us after this funding.
