[Funding alert] Startup Mentza raises $400K in seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures

Audio-based conversational learning startup Mentza has raised a seed round of $400,000 led by angel investment platform Inflection Point Ventures. 

The funding will be utilised in building a healthy base of experts and curious learners, building an efficient translation of conversations into content, and to broad base the platform regionally and across interest communities. The startup has over 23,000 registered users and has already generated over 60,000 minutes of content.

Mentza is an audio-based conversational learning platform that wants to engage users through high quality focussed 20-minute conversations across diverse topics. Conversations are recorded with features like highlight, 40-second snippets, and curated content recommendation.

Ankur Mittal, Co-founder, Inflection Point Ventures, said,

“Mentza’s model of delivering curated content in a 20 minute capsule is a powerful idea. Audio is a powerful tool that allows you to learn and participate while multi-tasking. Mentza is looking to build an audio focused conversational learning platform in a community setting, led by a team of strong second-time founders with diverse backgrounds and strengths.”

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“Many funds we spoke with as part of our due diligence also showed keen interest in this space. While B2C is the immediate focus, Mentza is separately also working on a focussed B2B strategy going after large untapped Enterprise Podcast space,” Ankur added.

Mentza has recently announced creator partnerships with Rolling Stones and Harper Collins and is in talks with MICA faculty and students to engage them on the platform.

The startup is building both B2B and B2C use cases. Users can build a portfolio of recorded conversations with highlights and snippets. The app is free to use for all and the initial focus is to attract users (creators and listeners) from LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.

Anurag Vaish, Founder of Mentza, said, “Our mission is to get every growth-minded person to engage in at least one Mentza conversation every day, thus making learning effortless, continuous, and social. IPV’s investor community has CXOs who understand the need for continuous learning in today’s challenging growth environments. Thus, making them the ideal strategic partners in our vision.”

Audio content market in India is at an inflection point. As of December 2019, 40 million Indian internet users have listened to podcasts. The audio-based content has tremendous potential to catch up with video and text formats for the simple reason that one can listen while multitasking. Edtech is still going through its round of innovations and needs more effortless and safer formats and live audio addresses that gap the bridge. Mentza believes that learning is easier and richer in conversations than planned monologues.