technology

Rigi raises $12.3 million funding from Elevation Capital, MS Dhoni, others


Rigi has raised Rs 100 crore ($12.3 million) in a funding round led by Elevation Capital. Accel India, Stellaris Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital has also participated in the latest funding round of the online content broadcasting and mentoring platform provider.

Rigi has also added new angel investors to its cap table.

These include India’s former cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Cred founder and CEO Kunal Shah, NoBroker founder and CEO Amit Kumar Agarwal, Country Delight founder Chakradhar Gade, and personal finance content creator Sharan Hegde.

The startup said it planned to expand overseas using the fresh capital.

Bengaluru-based Rigi expanded its operations to Indonesia, its first overseas market, three months ago, founder and chief executive Swapnil Saurav told ET.

“We are creating a lot of tools for creators so we will keep investing in them. We will also keep investing in the tech team so that we create more tools for different categories of creators… we feel this solution can be easily introduced to Southeast Asia countries and other similar geographies,” Saurav added.

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Rigi has raised about $25 million across three rounds within 14 months of inception.It last raised $10 million in a funding round, dubbed Series A, co-led by Accel India, Sequoia Capital India and Stellaris Venture Partners. The company employs 80 people across its India and Indonesia offices.

Founded in 2021 by Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani alumni Saurav and Ananya Singhal, Rigi is to content creators what Shopify is to sellers. Saurav and Singhal previously also founded gaming and sports media company Halaplay Technologies, which was acquired by Nazara Technologies in 2020.

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Content creators use Rigi to pay WhatsApp and Telegram groups, handle automated member addition and removal along with subscription reminders, create courses and learning guides and sell them online, host webinars with authenticated attendees, create pay-to-view content, among other use cases.

Rigi bundles features these tools of subscription management, courses, live workshops, paid one-to-one interaction and integration with social platforms for content creators with knowledge in areas education, fitness, gaming, among over 30 categories. Rigi said it had serviced over 10,000 creators so far.

“Rigi’s growth in India is phenomenal. It has grown 40X in the last 12 months, in terms of the total value of money flowing from followers to creators through Rigi’s system,” Mayank Khanduja, partner, Elevation Capital, told ET.

Elevation Capital has invested in over 150 companies across consumer internet, Software as a Service, fintech, consumer brands, edtech, health-tech, Web 3.0 and crypto. It announced its eighth pool of capital of $670 million in April 2022. Its previous bets in the creator economy include Sharechat, Turnip and Headfone.

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