[Funding alert] Josh Talks raises $3.5 mn in a round led by Ankur Capital

Josh Talks, the regional content and upskilling platform has raised$3.5 million in funding from Ankur Capital, a new age investor.

The funding round also saw participation from Vijay Shekhar Sharma (founder and CEO of Paytm); Ritesh Agarwal (founder and group CEO of OYO); Vaibhav Domkundwar (founder and CEO at Better Capital), Vineeta Singh (CEO of SUGAR Cosmetics); Ankur Warikoo (Ex-Nearbuy) and among other investors.

The platform plans to utilize this fund to grow itself and become a preferred social learning platform in India and also plans to experiment with new product lines that meet the aspirations of this user segment.

Gurugram-based Josh Talks Pvt. Ltd was founded in 2015 by Supriya Paul and Shobhit Banga, It creates exclusive content to help the brand connect with the users.

The startup operates one of the largest networks of non-entertainment channels on YouTube in India and is now building product lines to unlock its distribution channels.

“Over the last two years, we have doubled down on two things – growing our distribution across 10 languages and creating a product that monetizes this distribution network. We have been able to understand the aspirations of young India and have built one of the largest online communities, which is in turn directed towards our app, Josh Skills with 0 CAC. With the new capital, our goal is to expand our offerings, strengthen our executive team and take Josh to every household in India”, said, Supriya Paul, CEO, and Co-founder of Josh Talks.

The platform’s app has garnered over 3.2 million downloads since its launch and has over 200,000 paid subscribers from Tier II and III cities in India.

“The Josh team has always created solutions through first-principles reasoning. Whether it was with Josh Talks where they built it, language by language, focusing on the aspirations of the user segment, or now with Josh Skills, where the focus is on emulating an offline college experience. Their obsession with their users and solving their problems is what inspired us to back them”, said, Rema Subramanian, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Ankur Capital.

In February 2020, Josh Talks had raised $1.5 million from the New York-based Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF).

About Josh Talks

Josh is on a mission to unlock human potential by creating tools that effectively nurture each individual’s potential. They started out in 2015, giving Bharat’s youth access to relatable role models in regional languages through the Josh Talks platform. As the next step, they expanded to provide affordable, employability-enhancing skills through their Android application, Josh Skills.

Their flagship offering, the Spoken English course, has generated strong user feedback with industry-leading course completion rates, unlocking employment opportunities for users. As of March’22, our content has garnered over 2 billion lifetime views, averaging 85 million+ monthly views across platforms. Josh Skills has more than 3.2 million downloads with 200,000 paid users.