Artist focused platform Touchtalent raises $700K from SAIF Partners, Flipkart’s founders and 13 others
Founded by IIT-D and NIFT alumni, the social networking site and platform for artists to sell their work, Touchtalent, has raised USD 700K from SAIF Partners and 15 other angel investors, including Deep Kalra, both the Bansals from Flipkart, and Amit Ranjan among others.
It provides visibility to creators beyond their immediate social circle without compromising on the ownership of the content. The venture had earlier raised angel round from Abhishek Goyal, CEO of Tracxn, and Rakshita Sharma, former Director of Ranbaxy, in 2013.
Over the last two years, Touchtalent has been growing 30% on a monthly basis. Impressed with the growth, SAIF Parters along with 15 angel investors decided to invest around USD 700K. The illustrious list of angels includes Deep Kalra, Founder of Makemytrip, Sachin and Binny Bansal, Co-founders of Flipkart; Prashant Malik, Co-creator of Cassandra, and early team member at Facebook; and Amit Ranjan, Co-founder of SlideShare.
It has close to 50,000 content pieces spanning across genres like photography, painting, digital art, including others.
Earlier in August last year, Touchtalent launched its professional portfolio for creative users who would want to sell and earn through the platform. “This has been a huge success with professional creators, users from 25 different nationalities, who use Touchtalent’s professional studios to exhibit their work,” says the company.
At present, Touchtalent claims to have 500, 000 visits every month which is expected to grow to a million in the next one quarter. “Each user visits 10 pages and spends 5 minutes on an average on the platform. So far, it has 300,000 registered users across 100 countries.
Backstory
The brainchild of Mohd. Wassem and Ankit Prasad, the firm was incorporated in April 2012 from Ankit’s hostel room while he was still a student and Wassem was looking for an enterprising student to support his initiative. The duo shared the idea of working on a creative platform that will empower content creators to securely store and showcase their content on the web.
With half a million monthly visits on the web and an equal number of downloads on Android, Touchtalent has expanded its vision of appreciating and monetizing creativity at the global level. Unlike other online platforms, content creators are core to Touchtalent, which strives to offer value to these creators through unlimited inspirations, secure storage, global visibility, feedback, and transparent monetization.
Globally, they’d be competing with the likes of Tumblr, Behance and DevianArt — all names in the online creative space.
Website: Touchtalent
