Gurugram, India-based celebrity management platform Unlu, on Monday, announced that the company has raised INR 9 crore (around $1.23 Mn) in a seed funding round led by marquee venture capital firm, Nexus Venture Partners with participation from Mumbai Angels, TiE and Expert Dojo.
The startup claims that it has crossed 1 million users and focuses on celebrity engagements for consumers and brands with over 2,000 celebrities on its platform. Unlu plans to utilise the funding to build technological base, support product development and fuel its market expansion.
Founded last year by Vipul Agrawal, Himanshu Periwal, Akshay Pruthi and Anurag Dalia, Unlu consists of a bunch of 2X Entrepreneurs, having worked with Amazon, ixigo, Vokal and are graduates of INSEAD, IIM Calcutta and Delhi University.
Speaking of the development, Vipul Agrawal, Co-founder of Unlu, in a statement said,
“We founded Unlu with a single-minded focus to understand and exceed the expectations and needs of celebrities and fans and are excited to see the results and path forward. We understand the needs of celebrities who have tight schedules but want increased engagement with fans and need a platform to share knowledge about the craft they have perfected. We aim to become the de-facto platform for celebrities. We are thrilled to join hands with Nexus, the topmost VC firm of India.”
Anup Gupta, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners, said,
“We are excited to partner with Unlu in their vision of using technology-led innovations for significantly improving celebrity-fan engagements.”
Himanshu Periwal, Co-founder of Unlu, shared,
“Our vision is to use technology to significantly enhance the experience of celebrities with consumers and brands in a win-win manner for all stakeholders. Our product allows users to engage with the likes of Manoj Bajpayee, Guru Randhawa, Saina Nehwal, and 2,000+ celebrities in various formats,”
Unlu offers multiple facets of celebrity-fan engagements, the company has also recently launched an edtech arm called Unluclass, under which it offers virtual edu-tainment classes with popular celebrities and personalities like Johny Lever, Manoj Bajpayee, Ruskin Bond, Shashank Khaitan and many more. The company is announcing new celebrity partnerships every week. The startup also has a very strong growth on the B2B engagements with celebrities like Shaan, Salim-Sulaiman, Harbhajan Singh, engage with brands such as Flipkart, MPL, and Dr. Vaidya.
