IPV, Vijay Shekhar Sharma lead angel round in homegrown OTT startup Stage

The company says it's the only artist-based OTT platform in the country with content in art forms such as comedy, poetry, folk, and storytelling

Angel network Inflection Point Ventures along with Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma and others has invested Rs 3.5 crore in homegrown OTT platform Stage.

The startup plans to use the funds for building a stronger content library and launching a subscription service of their platform. 

Launched in 2019 by Vinay Singhal, Shashank Vaishnav and Parveen Singhal, Stage claims over 1.5 million downloads in Haryanvi dialect alone. It is now available in Rajasthani dialect and plans to launch new dialects such as Bhojpuri, Maithili and Magadhi this year. It is also the only artist-based OTT platform in the country with content in art forms such as comedy, poetry, folk, and storytelling, said the company. 

“While the Hindi/English language dominated OTT platforms have changed the decades old entertainment rules, we believe vernacular OTT platforms will be the next wave, considering we have large regional media consumption in the Country. Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali are some of the biggest regional content churning industries with a much higher viewer engagement statistics,” said Mitesh Shah, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Ventures.  

The company focuses on optimizing the ROI by working on professionally generated content at low prices. It has the production cost of one tenth as compared to other OTT platforms, claims the company, and aims to go beyond the centralisation and work on creating a platform focused on the regional diversity of the country. 

“IPV actively leverages its investor network strength to help its portfolio companies. They are aligned with us on our vision to build the most hyper local vernacular OTT platform ever built for Bharat,” said Vinay Singhal, Co-Founder & CEO, Stage.  

The startup aims to reach about 500 million users in the next five years.