Hoopr, a Mumbai-based music licensing marketplace, that provides content creators and businesses with royalty-free music, has raised $1.5 million (Rs 11.3 crore) in a seed funding round led by 9Unicorns & Venture Catalysts. The funds were also raised by the participation of Gurugram-based Inflection Point Ventures and 91Ventures. Marquee angel investors include Ashneer Grover (BharatPe), Anshoo Sharma (Magicpin), Sahil Barua (Delhivery), Giri Malpani, Anuraag Srivastava (Rainshine Entertainment), and Pradyumna Agrawal (Temasek).
The fresh infusion of funds will go towards strengthening their product, including the development of an AI-powered engine that helps creators find the right music for their videos. A portion of the funds will be allocated towards consolidating a larger library with themes, songs, soundtracks, effects, etc.
Gaurav Dagaonkar, co-founder of Hoopr said, “We will continue to invest in growing our library and building features on the Hoopr platform across the next 12 months.”
Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, co-founder, 9Unicorns & Venture Catalysts believes that content creators, social media community builders and curators have been some of the exceptions that have witnessed additional growth fuelled by the pandemic. “Work-from-home has also enabled a lot of fence-sitters to join the creators’ bandwagon and generate a primary/secondary source of income. Given this backdrop, we envisage immense potential for Hoopr,” said Sharma.
Mitesh Shah, co-founder, Inflection Point Ventures added, “With the huge market size and millions of users creating content daily, Hoopr has stepped in at the right time to monetise this space. We believe in the Founders and their tech expertise to lead this initiative, and we are sure our extensive network will be of immense help to them.”
India’s creator economy is on the cusp of a revolution. By 2025, India will have 650 million users who consume short-form videos. According to Hoopr, the market size of the creator economy is estimated to be at $104 billion globally and over 50 million creators are churning out content on a daily basis. Starting with sync licensing, a $3.7 billion market worldwide, Hoopr plans to tap into the creator economy, while focusing on Indian talent.
Founded in 2018, Hoopr is owned by GSharp Media, a music-tech company started by music producer and IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus, Gaurav Dagaonkar and entrepreneur Meghna Mittal. Hoopr aims to revolutionise the music industry by developing new methods of monetisation for creators and democratising the space by bringing buyers on one platform.
Visit Hoopr here
