[Funding alert] Social audio startup Bolkar raises undisclosed amount from GSF Investors and Axilor Ventures

Delhi-NCR-based Bolkar on Wednesday announced it has raised an undisclosed amount from two of India's leading early-stage venture firms, GSF Accelerator (led by Rajesh Sawhney) and Axilor Ventures (led by S Gopalakrishnan).

According to a statment, the startup will use the funds to onboard local micro-influencers, strengthen its product, and improve in-app personalisation.

Bolkar, a crowdsourced knowledge sharing and social audio platform for Bharat users, was founded by Prince Tripathi, Dhruv Kaushal, Abhishek Tripathi, and Saurabh Rai in late 2019.

Speaking about the recent fund raise, Dhruv Kaushal, Co-founder and CTO of Bolkar, stated, “Going forward we are also building social audio tools and live interactive features for users to have discussions in real-time, form sub-communities, and jump into conversations with experts on a variety of topics."

"We are also working on improving the delivery of curated content, the discovery of new experts, and the shareability of fresh perspectives. Some of the top categories on our app include Padhai Likhai, Technology, Raajneeti, Rishte, and Jeevan Shaili,” added Dhruv.

ALSO READ

Meet 14 startups selected by Axilor’s accelerator programme for its winter 2019 cohort

Further sharing about its mission Prince Tripathi, Co-founder and CEO of Bolkar, said,

"According to a report from KPMG, there has been an exponential rise in internet adoption across rural India and 90 percent of the new internet users are consuming content in their native languages. The new internet adopters from Tier-II and III towns face difficulty in written text and are replying on audio as a content format to surf the internet, interact with each other, and gain relevant knowledge."

"Bolkar is capitalising on this wave of audio-first internet users and is creating the largest pool of crowd-sourced audio content in local languages."

Commenting on the investment, Rajesh Sawhney, Founder of GSF Accelerator mentioned,

“Bolkar was part of the GSF Bootcamp in January 2020 and I have been continually impressed with the progress and growth of Bolkar. The founders work well together, are quick to iterate and execute, and have strong conviction to empower the rural audiences using audio as a content format.”

Both the early-stage investors — GSF Accelerator and Axilor Ventures have been actively investing in the audio sector. GSF Accelerator has previously invested in Khabri, an audio podcast app. Axilor Ventures has previously funded in Headfone, a social audio platform, which is backed by Fosun RZ Capital.