Desi app Chingari raises nearly Rs 10 crore in seed funding

Homegrown short video-sharing app Chingari which came into prominence as a TikTok alternative amid anti-China sentiment in the country has raised 1.3 million (around Rs 10 crore) in a seed round led by AngelList India, Utsav Somanis iSeed, Village Global, LogX Ventures, and Jasminder Singh Gulati of NowFloats.

The funding will be used to hire more talent to accelerate product development, ramp up the platform and make it more engaging and consumer focussed, and engage a larger consumer, the company said in a statement on Sunday.

"We're delighted that investors saw the immense potential in our vision and chose to join the Chingari journey," said Sumit Ghosh, Co-founder and CEO, Chingari App.

Chingari said it has a 25-million strong user base and records more than three million active daily users.

The homegrown social app claimed that it pays its content creators a 30 per cent cut in what it makes from brands and ensures transparency and data privacy.

Chingari recently emerged as the top winner in the "Social" category of "AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge" which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 4 with the aim of showcasing India as one of the leading app developing countries globally.

"Sumit and team Chingari have shown how to ship product features at a pace that I have not come across before," Utsav Somani, Partner, AngelList India, said in a statement.

"They have their ears to the ground, listening to users and are engaging with them on all channels to translate that into the best short video content experience for Bharat's demanding users."

A Chingari user can download and upload videos, chat with friends, interact with new people, share content, and browse through feed, among other things.

Chingari also allows its users to get creative with WhatsApp status, videos, audio clips, GIF stickers, and photos, and become popular.

Besides English and Hindi, the app can be used in multiple Indian languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.

The AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge showed that many Indian app developers are now bracing the challenge of developing globally competitive apps.

Global tech giants also appear to have taken note of the immense potential of the domestic app development ecosystem.

According to a new report, Microsoft is planning to invest about $100 million in the home-grown regional language social media app ShareChat which already counts Twitter as one of its investors.