iWorld
Mitron raises $ 5 mn led by Nexus Venture Partners
KOLKATA: Homegrown short-form video app Mitron has announced it raised $ 5 million, led by Nexus Venture Partners. 3one4 Capital and Arun Tadanki’s private syndicate on LetsVenture also participated in the latest round.
Mitron app is a short-form social video app that allows users to create, upload, view, and share entertaining short videos. Mitron is founded by Shivank Agarwal (alumnus of IIT Roorkee) and Anish Khandelwal (alumnus of Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology). Both the founders are Computer Science engineers and earlier worked together at MakeMyTrip.
The latest round of financing saw participation from stellar angels including Deep Kalra (Chairman, MakeMyTrip), Amrish Rau (CEO, Pine Labs),Jiten Gupta (Founder, Jupiter), Amarjit Batra (MD, Spotify India), Anand Chandrasekharan (Former Facebook, Snapdeal executive),Karan Bajwa (MD, Google Cloud, India),Radhika Ghai (Co-founder, Shopclues), Vikalp Sahni (Co-Founder and Ex-CTO at GoIbibo and Volunteer Architect at AarogyaSetu) and Shanti Mohan (Founder, LetsVenture).TK Kurien (Premji Invest),Manish Vij & Harish Bahl (Smile Group) also participated in their individual capacity.
The company will use the new infusion of capital to accelerate its product development to increase user engagement and hire high quality talent. The company also plans to onboard a wide network of Indian content creators on the app and invest in building Mitron brand.
Mitron founder and CEO Shivank Agarwal said, “We are thrilled to have Nexus Venture Partners join us in this journey, bringing in deep expertise of helping their portfolio companies build great products. We are committed to building Mitron as a world-class product that is designed for Indian users, by reimagining digital entertainment and engagement.
With more than 33 million downloads on Play Store and nine billion video views per month, Mitron has emerged as the popular choice among Indians for short-form video. We are thankful to our users for their love for Mitron”
Mitron app was launched in Apr 2020 and achieved the 10 million download milestone even before the unprecedented ban on Chinese apps.
Commenting on their decision to invest in Mitron, Pratik Poddar, Principal at Nexus Venture Partners said "Shivank and Anish are product-first, deep-tech and very iterative entrepreneurs. We have been tracking them for 3 months and loved the way they have evolved their thinking around content creation, community management and video delivery. We love backing ‘product and tech-first’ entrepreneurs. We believe eventually the best product with long term thinking will win. Focus is to create a high engagement and high retention community. Then only you can be long term partners for creators."
Anish Khandelwal, Founder & CTO, said "We have been rapidly improving our product experience and with this funding round, we plan to invest further in hiring top notch product & engineering talent that will help us build a world-class platform that can scale seamlessly”.
Anurag Ramdasan, Head of Investments at 3one4 Capital, said, “Shivank and Anish have built an impressive product together that we decided to back when they had just launched on the Play Store. Since then, the growth of the product as well as the team has been inspiring. The differentiated, long term thinking demonstrated by the founding team has led us to continue believing in them. We are excited to continue our work with the company to help build the next evolution of video engagement out of India”
Arun Tadanki said, “Mitron has been making rapid progress in establishing itself as the primary choice in the short-form video space and therefore, we are doubling down on our investment”
Follow Tellychakkar for the consumer facing news & entertainment
Gaming
Nodwin Gaming partners with Runestone for esports data and integrity solutions
South Asian esports leader joins forces with Czech tech firm to enhance tournament operations.
MUMBAI: Nodwin Gaming has just levelled up its game by bringing in a specialist to keep the scoreboard honest and the fans fully engaged. The leading South Asian esports and gaming company has announced a strategic partnership with Runestone, a Prague-headquartered esports technology firm specialising in real-time data and engagement solutions for tournament organisers and publishers.
The collaboration aims to strengthen competitive integrity, improve operational oversight, and deliver more interactive viewing experiences across Nodwin’s properties. It will initially focus on the Nodwin Clutch Series for Counter-Strike 2, a Tier 2 tournament that provides emerging teams with consistent competitive opportunities and helps build the talent pipeline.
The latest edition of the series recently concluded with Big defeating ECSTATIC 2–1 in the grand final of the $50,000 online event.
Nodwin Gaming chief business officer at MENA and global head of data monetization Teemu Koski said, “Integrity and transparency are fundamental to sustainable esports ecosystems, especially in Tier 2 competition where the next generation of talent emerges. Runestone’s expertise complements our experience in building scalable esports IPs.”
Runestone head of partnerships Michael Schwartz added, “Nodwin Gaming has built one of the most dynamic esports ecosystems across emerging markets. We’re thrilled to collaborate on supporting tournaments with greater transparency, deeper fan interaction, and scalable tools.”
Both companies are exploring opportunities to extend the partnership across additional titles, including mobile-first competitive ecosystems, and to develop new products for publishers, tournament operators, and event promoters.
In the rapidly growing world of esports, where fair play and fan excitement are equally crucial, Nodwin Gaming and Runestone are teaming up to ensure every match is not only competitive but also transparent and engaging. This alliance could well become a game-changer for Tier 2 tournaments across South Asia and beyond.
