The company will use the funding for strengthening its technology, hiring, and expansion, company founders told ET. Rigi was part of the first cohort of Accel Atoms, a program by Accel India for pre-seed startups.
Other investors in the current round include angel investors such as Nitish Mittersain, chief executive officer (CEO) of Nazara; Apaksh Gupta, chief of OneImpression; Anupam Mittal, founder of Shaadi.com, and creators like Tanmay Bhat among others.
Founded in October 2021 by Swapnil Saurav and Ananya Singhal, Rigi helps creators and influencers to monetize their community across all platforms, be it WhatsApp, Telegram, or Instagram. Influencers can use this platform to launch courses, conduct paid webinars, and launch free and paid communities through the Rigi app.
“Over the last five months, we have built a user base of over 200,000 users. In the next 12 months, we plan to take this to more than 10 times,” said Swapnil Saurav, cofounder and chief executive officer (CEO), Rigi.
“As part of the first Atoms cohort, their speed of execution in building a platform that supports different social channels has been just amazing. With the creator economy booming, we’re thrilled to be partnering with Rigi,” said Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel India.
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According to the company, the more than 50 million global creator population today is largely dependent on ad shares or brand partnerships for income, which are irregular and quite often unsubstantial.
This is largely owing to the fact that
direct fanbase monetisation is fundamentally broken as the user journey is deeply fragmented wherein each stage in the journey is spread across multiple platforms and tools (discovery, engagement, payment, management).
In the last few years, India has seen a bunch of startups including Y Combinator-backed Tag Mango and Qoohoo – backed by Unacademy cofounder Gaurav Munjal launch platforms that enable direct monetisation for creators. In fact, edtech unicorn
Unacademy has its own platform Graphy for creators to sell their courses. That said, direct monetisation so far forms a small piece of a creators earnings.
