Eloelo raises $13.5 Mn in Series B funding round

New Delhi: Eloelo, a live social entertainment platform, has announced it has raised Rs 114.3 Cr ($13.5 Mn) in its Series B funding round.

The round was led by Play Ventures and saw participation from Kalaari Capital, Mixi Investments, Gameskraft Technologies, Griffin Gaming Partners, Waterbridge Ventures, Courtside Ventures and Rocket Capital.

“Play Ventures believes that next-generation social platforms built natively for mobile-first and video-first communities remains a massively untapped opportunity. We’re incredibly excited to partner with the Eloelo team as they pioneer a new category of interactive social entertainment for India and beyond. We're seeing the convergence of creator-led content, real-time community engagement, and gamified social experiences reshaping how digital natives connect and express themselves. We believe Eloelo is at the forefront of this shift, bridging live streaming, gaming and culture in a way that’s uniquely local and globally scalable. As verticalised platforms continue to unbundle legacy social media, we see Eloelo carving out a powerful new category in the social entertainment landscape,” said Anton Backman, Partner, Play Ventures.

Eloelo is building a consumer social platform to become the ‘Digital Third Place for Bharat’ by blending live streams with gamification and micropayments.

The platform will aim to enable creators to host interactive video and audio livestreams in their local languages using AI-led tools to build a community, engage and monetise directly from their audiences. 

Eloelo has raised $50+ million in funding, including a $22 million round in September 2023 led by Courtside Ventures and Griffin Gaming Partners.

Eloelo competes directly or indirectly with other platforms like Sharechat, Frnd, Lokal in the live streaming and social entertainment space.

Saurabh Pandey, Founder and CEO, Eloelo said, “Eloelo is bringing the ‘Social’ back in consumer social platforms at a time when most platforms are built for passive content viewing. We believe that feeling connected to others is a primary human need of belongingness, and we are solving that across 8 languages by connecting Indians over interactive live streams with games, chat and virtual gifting to express their emotions. With close to 400 million aspirational middle India consumers, we believe this is a massive underserved market which needs India-first solutions. Extremely proud of our team that has built a platform that handles large-scale concurrency in live streams in 8+ languages along with building gen-AI tools to empower creators. The Series B round shows us the belief that our existing and new investors place on our vision and execution ability”

According to Lumikai’s latest ‘State of India Interactive Media and Gaming Report’, the media and entertainment market in India is worth $25 billion of which new media like esports, gaming, live streaming and digital media is worth $12 billion, expanding rapidly at a 16% CAGR.

Pandey added, “We switched on monetisation in May 2024 after 2-3 years of building the platform capabilities and scaling rapidly to hit PMF. In less than a year of launch, we are now hitting a 200 crore Annual revenue run rate ($23 Mn ARR) with 1.5 million paying users and are one of the fastest growing platforms in India at this scale. Consumer Tech in India is going through a massive shift away from ad-first models to micropayments, and we are happy to be powering this shift. Gone are the days when India was the MAU farm of the world - we are here to prove that the Bharat-first models have massive monetisation potential as we track towards a $60 million run rate by the end of this year. Beyond just numbers, the impact I am truly proud of at Eloelo is that more than 20,000 creators are now earning a livelihood by streaming and building their own digital communities”