Akshay Kumar-backed Social Swag raises $3.5M in a pre-Series A round

Mumbai-based new-age content platform Social Swag, which is a collective brainchild of Akshay Kumar, Rana Daggubati, Collective Artists, and Mahesh Bhupathi, today announced it has raised $3.5 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by IMEF and Unicorn India Ventures.

Other High net worth individuals (HNI’s) -- Vinay Agarwal, Ritesh Deshmukh, Raghu Subramanian, Edward Menezes, The Shekama Family Trust, and The Blume Founders fund, also participated in the round.

Launched in 2020, Social Swag helps individuals learn directly from top influencers, celebrities, and seasoned professionals. In the last 5 months, the startup says it has been growing 40% m-o-m and is poised to continue this trajectory as the online story in India continues to generate exciting outcomes.

The startup runs masterclasses, live learning sessions, and personal shoutouts for curious learners. It works on a subscription model giving unlimited access to the curated content on the platform.

According to the company's statement, Top celebrities like Lara Dutta, Bhavish Aggarwal, Abhinav Bindra, Akshay Kumar, Vicky Ratnani, and Avinash Gowarikar are running masterclasses on its platform.

Speaking on the development, Rana Daggubatti, Actor, Entrepreneur & Co-founder Of Social Swag, said: “We are excited to welcome our new investors and our focus will remain to create a platform where various people will find relevant content for themselves across different products. These would be a mix of entertainment, self-development, skill enhancement, and passion content.”

According to a recent industry report, there are over 1,50,000 professional content creators in India who are able to monetize their services. The global content creators’ economy is estimated to be over $100 billion. Social Swag is aiming to build its market leadership as the platform is backed by some of the most accomplished content creators and artists in India, it said.

Parth Gandhi, IMEF, said: “We are backing various entertainment opportunities in India and with Social Swag’s offering across multiple products we believe they will become an outlier in the space. That is why we chose them as our first investment.”

"We have been tracking Social Swag for close to 6 months now and are very bullish on the moat they have been able to create vis-a-vis access to talent and building technology to make it accessible. We are excited to back them in their journey," Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, said.

Mumbai-headquartered SNK Advisors acted as an advisor for Social Swag on the transaction, it added.

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