Quick take:
- The short video platform Chingari has ramped up its shift to NFTs with a $15 million funding round.
- The funding round was led by Republic Capital, while JPIN Venture Catalysts, Hill Harbour, also participated.
- The platform appointed Bollywood actor Salman Khan to be its brand ambassador in this new direction last year.
Short video platform Chingari’s shift to NFTs is gaining momentum after securing an additional $15 million in the current funding round. The latest funding was led by Republic Capital and brings the total funding in the series to $28 million.
Chingari has also secured the services of Bollywood actor Salman Khan as an ambassador in October last year, in a revamped marketing campaign that seeks to expand the brand’s reach beyond non-metro cities.
In one of his first actions since becoming an ambassador of the platform, Khan, who has 43.5 million followers on Twitter said he was officially launching the platform’s $GARI token and NFT marketplace.
The actor on Monday congratulated the platform for getting its social token, GARI token, listed on leading exchanges, referring to the achievement as “taking the leap into Web3 with swag”.
Chingari plans to use the fresh capital injection to improve the application features and expand the team.
Chingari was founded in 2018 by Sumit Ghosh, Deepak Salvi, and Biswatma Nayak among several other Indian TikTok clones that failed to gain traction. However, some completely fell off the wagon. Chingari has taken a different approach, focusing more on creator monetisation using crypto and NFTs.
The creator economy has leveraged the use of non-fungible tokens to get more out of their products, with celebrities flocking in to augment their incomes.
The industry is tipped to experience significant growth in 2022, as the wider creator community embraces the new trend.
Chingari’s plan to grow its user base from 35 million to 200 million in 2022, is seen as an ambitious goal. However, the company said it is beefing up its marketing campaign, specifically targeting the non-metro cities, which could drive the growth.
NFTs are digital encryptions that provide proof of ownership of digital content. Chingari’s short-video content marketplace could witness a lot of traction as it rolls out more features on the platform.
Stay up to date:
