[Funding Alert] Mitron raises seed funding of Rs 2 Cr from 3One4 Capital and LetsVenture

Indian short-form video app Mitron TV, hailed by many as India’s answer to now banned TikTok, has received seed funding of Rs 2 crore from 3one4 Capital and LetsVenture.

Interestingly, the development comes two days after the Indian government banned 59 Chinese mobile applications, including top social media platforms such as TikTok, Helo, and WeChat, to counter the threat posed by these applications to the country’s “sovereignty and security.” 

ALSO READ

[YS Exclusive] How Mitron founders built a desi app that strives to show the 'real India'

Mitron was launched two months ago as a short video-making app developed by two friends turned co-founders Shivank Agarwal and Anish Khandelwal. Within two months of its launch, the app crossed 100 million downloads, and has a rating of 4.4 out of 5 on Google Play Store.

Before the ban on 59 Chinese apps, Mitron gained popularity for being a 'Made in India' app and, at the same time, TikTok’s rating fell to around two points.

Along with popularity, Mitron has also garnered controversies. On June 2, Google decided to remove Mitron app from the Store "due to violation of its ‘spam and minimum functionality’ policy". However, the app was back soon enough.

Competition

Until last week, Mitron was competeting with TikTok, Kwai, Helo, Likee, Weibo, Bigo Live, U Video, Hago, Vigo Video, and Viva Video — all Chinese apps with millions of users from India.

Now that these apps are no more allowed to operate in India, Mitron's direct competition would be homegrown apps such as newly-launched Chingari. The video-sharing app Chingari recently crossed more than 2.5 million downloads on Google Play Store. According to the platform, the short video-sharing app reached the milestone from 550,000 downloads in 10 days. Earlier, it had garnered about 500,000 downloads in about 72 hours.

The short-video format is a hot space at present in India, and going forward entrepreneurs are expected to launch more apps in this space. Recently, ZEE5 launched TikTok-like short video platform HiPi within its app, which lets users create 90-second videos.

ALSO READ

Here is a list of Indian apps without any Chinese investments