Homegrown short-form video app, Mitron has raised $5 million in its Series A funding round, led by Nexus Venture Partners. Existing investors, 3one4 Capital and Arun Tadanki’s private syndicate on LetsVenture also participated in the latest round.

Founded by Shivank Agarwal and Anish Khandelwal, Mitron allows users to create, upload, view, and share entertaining short videos.

The latest round of financing also saw participation from angels including MakeMyTrip Chairman Deep Kalra, Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau and Jupiter founder Jiten Gupta.

The participants also include Amarjit Batra, MD, Spotify India, former Facebook and Snapdeal executive Anand Chandrasekharan, Google Cloud India MD Karan, ShopClue co-founder Radhika Ghai, Goibobo co-founder and ex-CTO Vikalp Sahni and Shanti Mohan, Founder, LetsVenture.

TK Kurien of Premji Invest, Manish Vij & Harish Bahl of Smile Group also participated in their individual capacity.

The company will use the new infusion of capital to accelerate its product development, increase user engagement and hire high-quality talent. The venture also plans to onboard a wide network of Indian content creators on the app and invest in building the Mitron brand. The team hopes to reach a headcount of 40 from the current 15, in the next couple of months.

“We are thrilled to have Nexus Venture Partners join us in this journey, bringing in deep expertise of helping their portfolio companies build great products. We are committed to building Mitron as a world-class product that is designed for Indian users, by reimagining digital entertainment and engagement," said Shivank Agarwal, Founder and CEO of Mitron.

With more than 33 million downloads on Play Store and 9 billion video views per month, Mitron has emerged as the popular choice among Indians for short-form video, he added.

Launched in April 2020, the venture claims it achieved the 10 million download milestone even before the unprecedented ban on Chinese apps and wants to further strengthen its AI backed platforms - Moderation, Creator tool, Content Recommendation and discoverability.​

Mitron raised a small round of seed funding from 3one4 Capital and Arun Tadanki's private syndicate on LetsVenture in July 2020.

Commenting on their decision to invest in Mitron, Pratik Poddar, Principal at Nexus Venture Partners said "We love backing ‘product and tech-first’ entrepreneurs. We believe eventually the best product with long term thinking will win. Focus is to create a high engagement and high retention community. Then only you can be long term partners for creators."

Mitron is now looking at building more categories of content, launching new languages, genres, and associations.

Also with the New Education Policy putting a lot of focus on Arts, Mitron is looking at building communities around users with talent like singing, painting and playing music instruments, the company said.

First Published:Aug 18, 2020 12:13 AM IST