Please note this is an updated article inclusive of latest updated information
India’s homegrown video-sharing app, Mitron, has reportedly raised INR 2 crore from 3 one4 capital and LetsVenture. Angel investor Arun Tadanki led syndicate participated in the round on behalf of LetsVenture. News channel CBNC TV18 first reported this news. LetsVenture has also confirmed the news to Techpluto.
This is apparently Mitron’s first fundraising from a VC firm as it looks to capitalize on the huge scope for exponential growth following the Indian government’s ban on TikTok.
LetsVenture told Techpluto that the funding took place earlier in the quarter, much before the ban on Chinese apps was imposed. It further added that investors and Arun Tadanki recognized the prowess of the Mitron team and their approach to solving a big white space in India.
Arun Tadanki, lead of the LetsVenture syndicate said, “We spotted Mitron at a very early stage before anyone even heard of it and completed the round very rapidly. We have been working with founders from the pre-incorporation phase and we believe that the founding team is top-notch with an ability to build a world-class product for Indian users. We are delighted by the rapid progress Mitron team is making to build a product with large scale adoption.”
Shivank Agarwal, Founder, and CEO of Mitron said, “We are a young company and we are hiring some of the best product & engineering talent to scale up Mitron rapidly. We are confident that we can build Mitron into one of the best apps in the short-form social video space.”
“With the support of this round, our focus is on building features and supporting content that uniquely resonates with Indian users, while prioritizing community standards and local laws in India,” Agarwal.
Mitron was founded by Shivank Agarwal and Ankit Khandelwal with an aim to help people effortlessly create and upload short videos. In other words, it is India’s answer to Tiktok.
Cashing on the growing anti-Chinese sentiment, the home grown video sharing app off late has witnessed sporadic growth in its mass popularity. The spurt in popularity obviously helped the local app to improve its download numbers quite drastically.
Mitron claims that its daily traffic has jumped by almost 11 times ever since the ban on Chinese apps became public and said that today its user base has touched 17 Mn.
However, Mitron also faced controversy a few weeks back, after its app was temporarily suspended from Google play store. Google cited violation of its policy guidelines for imposing the temporary ban. But the app was back into the android app ecosystem after the search engine giant lifted the ban.
Mitron competes with other homegrown and local apps like Roposo and Chinagri, which are equally in a buoyant mood as they look to seize the growth opportunity triggered by the TikTok ban.
