Key facts
- EloElo said the $80 million Series C was led by Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal.
- The round valued EloElo at $500 million and brought total fundraising to $130 million, the company said.
- MIT Investment Co. and existing investors Play Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Waterbridge Ventures and Griffin Gaming Partners also invested.
- Story TV carries more than 5,000 titles in six languages, according to the company.
- Analyst firm Redseer said only 15-17 million people in India pay for microdrama monthly.
EloElo, the Indian company behind the microdrama app Story TV, said it raised $80 million in a Series C round led by Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal. The round brought total fundraising to $130 million at a valuation of $500 million, the company said.
MIT Investment Co. and existing investors Play Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Waterbridge Ventures and Griffin Gaming Partners also invested, according to the company. EloElo was founded in 2020 by Saurabh Pandey, a former Flipkart executive.
Story TV carries more than 5,000 titles in six languages, the company said. Pandey told TechCrunch that users spend an average of 95 minutes on the app across multiple sessions in a day. The company said it has more than 40 million monthly users across its apps, most of them on Story TV.
Analysts cited by the report put Story TV's active users at more than 33 million and monthly microdrama viewership in India at more than 118 million. Analyst firm Redseer said more than 40 million people have paid for microdrama at least once, but only 15-17 million pay monthly. A separate Ormax Media survey suggested 72% of people have never paid for microdrama.
EloElo also operates a vertical video learning app called Master and an AI companion app called Voxy AI. It has 240 employees and plans to expand its AI and machine learning research team, the company said. Its Dolphin AI platform, started as an internal video creation tool, is being prepared for wider release, according to its website.