Influencer marketing platform Kofluence on Tuesday said it has raised USD 4 million (about Rs 30 crore) in funding led by discount brokerage Zerodha’s co-founder Nikhil Kamath.
Kunal Shah of fintech Cred, filmmaker Karan Johar, Dharma Productions’ Apoorva Mehta, Udaan’s Sujeet Kumar, microblogging site Koo’s Aprameya Radhakrishna and venture capital fund Upsparks were among other investors who participated in the round. The newly raised money will be deployed for developing a proprietary platform, accelerating hiring across multiple geographies and scaling up for expansion, as per a statement.
Kamath admitted that while content creators captured eyeballs, there was a gap created by monetisation tools, which left creators wanting help and infrastructure to make a sustainable living out of their content or creativity. With Kofluence expanding its product suite to encompass creation and monetisation tools, creators on the platform will have varied monetisation avenues to explore, Kamath, who took home a salary of Rs 100 crore, added.
Sreeram Reddy Vanga, the founder investor of the company, said influencer marketing spends are expected to jump to USD 25 billion by 2025. the booming creator economy will equip us to scale up our business model and build a self-serve and assisted SAAS (software-as-a-service) platform to become the go-to Martech (marketing technology) destination for both brands and creators, Reddy said.
The 2019-founded Kofluence provides a data-driven, AI-led platform for the creators’ economy, and serves over 1 lakh creators through which it claims to reach 1.6 billion people.