[Funding alert] Sonu Nigam, Whiteboard Capital lead seed round in music learning startup Artium Academy

Online music education platform Artium Academy has raised $750,000 in a seed round led by Bollywood singer Sonu Nigam, with participation from Whiteboard Capital and JetSynthesys.

The Mumbai-based startup runs an eponymous music learning and community platform that was in the beta stage since February. It has finally launched publicly, and has also roped in Sonu Nigam as the patron-in-chief. He would be involved in building the pedagogy and performance-driven curriculum for the startup.

Talking of his investment, the singer said,

"Musical expertise is a product of multiple inputs from a variety of sources, experiences, influences, inspirations, challenges, struggles, failures, and victories. We are privileged to bring our learning, knowledge, skill development methods, and insights within the reach of multitudes of students through performance-based learning programmes that will bring out the best in each individual."

Besides him, Artium Academy has also roped in distinguished musicians including Shubha Mudgal (Hindustani Classical), Aruna Sairam (Carnatic Music), KS Chitra (South Indian popular film music), Louiz Banks (Keyboard), Aneesh Pradhan (Percussions), Raju Singh (Guitar), and Gino Banks (Drums) as board members and faculty heads.

Ashish Joshi, Founder and CEO, Artium Academy said, "The venerated music training methods of India are ready to meet the technological opportunities of the new age to create a never before learning experience for the music aspirant of today."

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Ashish, who co-founded Artium along with Nithya Sudhir, further added, "Artium aspires to be a thought leader in technological research and innovation to enhance the power of self assessment, to capture vast data from human judgement, feed machine learning towards creation of AI-supported systems, and facilitating the reach of qualitative pedagogy to the deserving across the globe," he added.

The platform enables both resident Indians as well as NRIs across the globe to not just listen to but also learn music through a structured performance-driven curriculum, taught 1:1 by certified teachers. Users also get access to personalised dashboardS, learning tools, graphs, virtual auditoriums for live gigs, and practice studios.

Media reports suggest that the startup is already grossing monthly revenues of Rs 10 lakh, and will open up the platform to international markets. It also plans to rope in music teachers from prestigious global institutions. Without revealing specifics, the company claims its revenue is growing 30 percent, while its user base has grown 8X.

Artium Academy's funding comes at a time when the hobby learning (or extracurricular edtech) sector is witnessing a lot of activity. In 2021 alone, the segment saw nine deals worth $18 million in funding, as per Venture Intelligence.

Late last year, Bollywood superstar Deepika Padukone backed FrontRow, another hobby learning startup for music, comedy, and cricket. Earlier this year, popular rapper Raftaar led an investment in the startup.

Speaking of his investment in Artium, Rajan Navani, CEO of Jetsynthsys, said, "Music learning is in line for major disruption. Like it did for music creation, distribution and monetisation, technology coupled with the growing aspiration of Indians for extracurricular activities will expand the music learning market multi-fold."

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