[Funding alert] Headfone raises $10 mn in Series B funding led by Elevation Capital

Audio OTT platform Headfone has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Elevation Capital. Hashed, an existing investor, as well as prominent angels such as Ajit Mohan (Founding CEO, Hotstar), Biswa Kalyan Rath (Entertainer) and Anshumani Ruddra (Group PM, Google) also participated in the funding round.

Headfone was founded in 2018 by former Facebook software engineers, Pratham Khandelwal and Yogesh Sharma, it is an audio OTT platform that primarily provides audio dramas in fiction genres like Horror, Love, Religion, Comedy in Hindi, and other languages.

The startup said that new funds will be used to diversify content offerings across languages and to expand across genres.

“Unlike video or text, audio enables asynchronous and screen-free content consumption which allows listeners to consume the audio content throughout the day. Also, the popular fiction genres like horror, fantasy and thriller are really expensive to create and difficult to get right in video format whereas the same genres can be quickly produced in audio drama format, and still give an immersive and imaginative experience to listeners,” Pratham Khandelwal, CEO, Headfone said.

There are currently 3 million monthly active users on Headfone with 52 minutes as average daily time spent per active user on the app. There are a total of 800,000 content pieces on the platform, which has been growing at a 10 percent CMGR for the past two years, according to The Free Press Journal.

“Audio Dramas, so far, have been created by bringing together multiple artists in the same physical studio, and this makes it a very expensive and time-consuming process. But what we have built is a decentralized online platform where multiple artists, namely writers, voice actors and sound engineers seamlessly collaborate with each other to create audio dramas in a scalable, time-efficient and cost-effective manner,” Yogesh Sharma, CTO, Headfone said.

Mayank Khanduja, Partner at Elevation Capital said, “What stands out about Pratham and Yogesh is the product-first approach they have taken to generating high quality user generated content. The uniqueness of this approach has resulted in a tremendous amount of customer love for Headfone, which is evidenced by their best in class retention metrics.”

About Headfone

Headfone helps content creators create and share the audio content with listeners.

It works with writers, voice-over artists, sound engineers and musicians to produce original audio shows on the platform. It connects podcasters, story-tellers, artists, musicians and motivational-speakers to our user base of passionate listeners.