OTT platform STAGE has announced raising Rs 40 crore led by Bloom Ventures. The company claimed that the funding round saw participation from NB Ventures, Dholakia Ventures, TSM Ventures, We Founder Circle, Mumbai Angels, Tarmac Ventures, Tailwind Ventures, Longtail Ventures, Let’s Ventures, and AngelList. The company had earlier raised Rs 31 crore, taking the total raised capital to Rs 71 crore, as per reported by Yourstory.
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The capital raised will be used to go deeper into Haryana and Rajasthan, create more original content and grow the product, Vinay Singhal, co-founder, of STAGE, said. “We plan to capture 10% of the over 25 million households watching video content in Haryana and Rajasthan by mid-2024. STAGE’s vision is to become a platform for entertainment, connection, and celebration of cultures for all dialect-speaking people in the country. By 2027, we plan to launch in the top 20 dialects of the country, which have the potential to reach over 200 million households,” he added.
Manch has produced many web series in Haryanvi, including Akhada, Group-D, College Kand, Opri Parai, etc. Backed by this strong product-market fit and customer love, STAGE launched the Rajasthani dialect in June 2022 and already has 10k+ customers.
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STAGE which allows the artists to create local standup content for the local audience in their local context and dialects, a STAGE that allows the artists to distribute and monetize their content, a STAGE that allows the audience to discover highly curated local standup content that connects with them, a STAGE that connects Bharat, with Bharat.
Karthik Reddy of Blume Ventures said, “STAGE’s slogan describes the passion and motivation of the team to build for the immense diversity of language and dialect that India offers. Building quality content is the best bet to conserve our dialects and languages and this is STAGE’s mission. With two dialects launched and dozens more to build, we are excited to be partners on this journey.”
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About STAGE
The STAGE is a hyper-local OTT platform that produces content in dialects like Haryanvi, Rajasthani, etc. STAGE has content formats like long web series, movies, short films, standup comedians, poetry, folk, and much more. It is founded by Vinay Singhal, Shashank Vaishnav, and Parveen Singhal in 2019.
