Eloelo, a creator-led online gaming and live streaming portal garnered $13 million in a Series A funding phase headed by Korea’s KB investments and the Bengaluru-based initial development entrepreneurial firm, Kalaari Capital.
Eloelo, founded by ex-Flipkart top administration Saurabh Pandey and Akshay Dubey in August 2020, enables individuals to livestream sessions, establish engaging communities, and earn money straightforwardly from followers via virtual presents that could be changed into genuine currency.
The startup has now raised approximately $16 million in total funding. Together with existing shareholders like Waterbridge Ventures and Lumikai Fund, Pernod Ricard’s business venturing arm Convivialité Ventures as well as Rocket Capital joined in the investment round.
On its portal, the Bengaluru-based business claims to have over 3.5 million monthly active users and 40,000 creators. The funds would be used to expand the firm’s tech, marketing, and content departments, as well as nurture new collaborations with creators, according to the firm. Eloelo also says that its platform is built to accommodate low-spec smartphones, appealing to the nation’s tier-2, 3 and 4 regions.
Eloelo CEO, Saurabh Pandey, said, “Creators want to cultivate deep, authentic relationships with their fans and Eloelo lets them imagine completely new interactive live experiences to engage fans. We have been growing at 40 percent month-on-month with a vision to build the future of interactive entertainment,”
Vani Kola, Managing Director at Kalaari Capital, said, “There is an entire generation of first-time internet users who are now able to build a direct channel to their fans to sell their unique products and offerings. Deeper relationships will be built between creators and their fans, powered by the emergence of an entire ecosystem of tools and platforms that enable this shift.
“Eloelo is enabling these creators with the perfect blend of social games and interactivity with live streaming.”
Salone Sehgal, General Partner at Lumikai Fund, stated, ”Their product led thinking and deep user insights enables them to drive strong user engagement, retention and creator monetisation by innovatively leveraging the power of live ‘lean forward’ formats of entertainment.”
As it prepares to introduce commercialization at scale, Eloelo said it aims to introduce new kinds of realtime engagements on the platform that would allow creators to pay their diehard fans. For its best innovators, it’s also looking toward non-fungible tokens (NFTs).