Pocket Aces raises $14.7 mn fresh funds

MUMBAI: Digital studio Pocket Aces has raised $14.7 million from Sequoia Capital, DSP Group, 3one4 Capital along with other prominent investors.

The Mumbai-based firm plans to use the fresh capital to invest in content, technology and talent. It has also plans to expand social distribution by starting three new content channels in the next 12 months. It is targeting a run-rate of 1 billion monthly video views on original content by 2020 while now its shows garner 500 million views per month.

“With massive penetration of mobile internet and a large consumer base hungry for local content, we believe there has never been a better time to build a large content business here," said Ashwin Suresh, Anirudh Pandita and Aditi Shrivastava in a joint statement.

Currently, Pocket Aces operates three socially distributed content channels: FilterCopy (short videos), Dice Media (long-form videos) and Gobble (food and lifestyle videos). It uses local advertising to monetize and currently works with brands. Moreover, the company launched its Loco app last year which has over 15 million registered users.