Digital
hypergro.ai secures Rs seven crore funding: Leading the charge in AI-driven digital marketing revolution
Mumbai: hypergro.ai, a Bangalore- based martech startup, focused on boosting brand revenues and dramatically reducing customer acquisition costs, has announced that it has raised seed funding of Rs seven crore. The round was led by Silverneedle Ventures with participation from Huddle, TDV Partners, HME Ventures, Dholakia Ventures, FiiRE, & prominent angel investors like Arjun Vaidya, Ankit Kedia and Rajesh Sawhney.
In the current digital landscape, rising Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) are eating up large parts of budgets without delivering expected returns. This problem is made worse by poor Return on Ad Spend (ROAS); even with huge investments in various ads. This combination of challenges has brands stuck in a cycle of high spending with low results, making steady growth hard to achieve.
With hypergro.ai, brands can reverse this trend by using its state-of-the-art platform that harnesses the raw power of user-generated content (UGC) and couples it with cutting-edge artificial intelligence. This revolutionary synergy not only simplifies the customer acquisition trajectory but also offers brands a potent tool that’s both cost-effective and resonant with modern audiences.
On the fundraising, Silverneedle Ventures partner Prashant Panday said, “Hypergro.ai attacks the biggest challenge facing consumer marketing companies – rising CACs. We at Silverneedle Ventures believe strongly in the power of technology in general and AI in particular. We are proud to lead this round and repose confidence in the dynamic founders of the company.”
The startup was founded in the year 2022 by Rituraj Biswas (CEO), Neha Soman (CBO), Abhijeet Kumar (CTO), and Arijit Mukhopadhyay (CPTO). With roots embedded in platforms like ShareChat and Glance, their collective insight into the digital domain is profound. Biswasj spearheads the product, focusing on innovation and keeping our solutions fresh and ahead of the competition. Kumar, hailing from IIT Roorkee, and Mukhopadhyay, a proud product of IIT Delhi, together constitute the tech-driven backbone. Meanwhile, Soman, leveraging her vast marketing expertise and hands-on experience as a YouTube creator, infuses the team with a distinct content-centric insight.
“At hypergro, we’re not merely witnessing the future – we’re crafting it. By merging the power of AI with the authenticity of UGC, we’re redefining the dynamics of business-customer interactions. Our mission is to make this groundbreaking shift both transformational and available to everyone,” stated Biswas.
A substantial slice of this financial boost will be channeled to hypergro’s core – its AI capabilities. This encompasses in-depth data exploration, refining predictive algorithms, and polishing automation to offer clients unparalleled results. As hypergro scales its operations, it will need to expand its teams. The funds will be used to attract top talents in areas such as AI and machine learning, tech, product, sales and marketing. Moreover, the company is setting its sights on new markets and is poised to make its innovative solutions accessible to a broader spectrum of businesses.
With businesses steadily gravitating online, they are poised to cater to a booming market, predicted to soar to an astronomical $3.1 billion by 2024 in India alone. Nestled at the pivotal crossroads of digital advertising and UGC, hypergro is the torchbearer in these swift-scaling sectors.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
