Chingari announces raising $13 Mn in new round; Salman Khan joins its cap table

Short video entertainment app Chingari on Thursday announced a Rs 94.25 crore or $13 million financing round led by OnMobile. Significantly, this round saw the entry of Bollywood star Salman Khan in the Bengaluru-based firm’s cap table.

According to regulatory filings, Chingari has raised Rs 59.6 crore in its pre-Series A round. It looks like the company will receive the remaining amount in the coming weeks.

The company has allotted 34,631 pre-Series A preference shares at an issue price of Rs 17,208 per share to raise the sum. OnMobile led the round with an infusion of Rs 31.86 crore whereas Rs 27.74 crore came from over two dozen individual investors and several businesses operating in the real-estate and trading domains.

The company has also allotted shares worth Rs 13.5 crore to Khan for consideration other than cash to be its brand ambassador. His talent agency firm Uniworld Being Talented (UBT) has also received shares to the tune of Rs 1.5 crore.

Ayaan and Alizeh Agnihotri have invested Rs 20 lakh each while other individuals such as Vikram Tanwar, Rohit Khanna, Akash Khurana, Anil, Mamta and Shruti Kulkarni have collectively put in over Rs 2.60 crore. 

It’s worth noting that Chingari recently tied up with NH Studioz, a Mumbai based content house, to showcase Salman Khan’s films on the app.

Other investors in the round include Republic Master Fund and Hill Harbour Trading, who have invested Rs 5.18 crore and Rs 3.73 crore respectively. White Star Capital International Limited has put in Rs 1.82 Crore and helmet maker Vega Auto Accessories has invested Rs 75 Lakh.

Global Growth Access LLC has put in Rs 50 Lakhs while Venture Catalysts has received shares worth Rs 76 lakh for being advisors for the transaction.

Before this round, Chingari had mopped up close to Rs 11 crore in a seed round from AngelList, Blume Founders Fund, Jasminder Gulati among others.

Chinagri came into existence last year after a ban on the ever-growing popular app TikTok and other China-linked entertainment and utility apps was brought last June. 

While the segment saw the frenzied entry of many players including Trell and Mitron to claim the space vacated by TikTok and the rest, deep-pocketed players such as Dailyhunt, Times Internet and ShareChat have been dominating the short video entertainment space ever since with their respective apps. 

However, Chingari’s download numbers have been dwindling since November. According to Sensor Tower data, it has barely recorded 1.3 million downloads in the past three months. 

In comparison, Dailyhunt’s Josh has been downloaded over 63 million times in the past 90 days. ShareChat’s Moj downloads numbers for the three months period stood at over 73 million.