Tring Raises Pre-Series A Round from Kalaari Capital and Others

Tring, India's largest celebrity engagement platform, has grown 30x in revenues with over 100x growth in user traffic since its last capital raise. Launched in 2020, Tring has quickly become the category leader in the space of digital interactions, with over 12,000 celebrities connecting with their fans through personalised celebrity video messages (shoutouts), direct message on social media, video calls, merchandise, brand video endorsements and more.

From Left to Right: Advait Khadse, Rahul Saini, Akshay Saini, Pranav Chabhadia, Mihir Parikh

Continuing the growth momentum, Tring is closing its Pre-Series A round of USD 5 Mn led by Kalaari Capital, which invested USD 2 Mn and has the option to invest further 2.5 Mn in a new tranche at a later date. The round also saw participation from Blume Founders fund, REDBROOK PTE. (Singapore) and Sujeet Kumar (Udaan.com).

Co-founded by Akshay Saini, Rahul Saini and Pranav Chabhadia, the company claims to have over a million people visiting the website to interact with celebrities, and is on the path to 1,00,000+ paid transactions monthly. Tring will use the new funds for improving the product and to introduce other forms of celebrity-fan engagement, with a sharp focus on further monetizing its customer base of over 2,00,000 customers.

The users (fans) book shoutouts and video calls from celebrities for themselves or as surprise gifts to family and friends for birthdays, anniversaries, motivation, festive greetings, wedding invites and many other messages. These videos are recorded personally by the celebrities and they usually deliver the same custom message as requested by the user, while sometimes adding their own unique elements to make it even more special.

Tring for Business is the company's fast growing service for brands and businesses, to book celebrities for product promotion, brand endorsement, personalised messaging, and more. With over 1,200 businesses as customers, this easy-to-use service offers a wide variety of celebrities across genres, categories, budgets, regions, etc. with lightning-quick turnaround times, transparent process, and unbelievably economical prices.

Tring's subscription service Tring Prime offers great value through discounts and other benefits to its users. Subscribers get early-access to new celebrities and exclusive merchandise on the platform. The company claims to have sold over 20,000 subscriptions and plans to reach 1,00,000+ active subscriptions by next year.

Vamshi Reddy, Partner at Kalaari says, "We are thrilled to back Akshay, Rahul and Pranav in their journey to disrupt the celebrity fan engagement space in India. The team has shown strong executional capabilities and bring deep understanding of the market opportunity. We are confident in their ability to build a leading fan engagement platform from India and we are proud to welcome them to the Kalaari family."

CEO Akshay Saini says, "India is a huge market for celebrity engagement services with users demonstrating high fandom levels. We are working to make Tring the one-stop marketplace for all digital personalised interactions with celebrities in India and soon Asia. We are delighted to have robust institutions like Kalaari Capital joining us on this journey. Kalaari Capital's strong belief in the creator economy makes them the ideal partners while we continue growing rapidly across Asia over the next few quarters."

Tring competes with international platforms like Cameo (USA) and Memmo (Europe) that have witnessed rapid growth and have attracted massive user interest.

About Tring

Tring is India's largest tech-enabled celebrity engagement platform with over 12,000 celebrities. It helps fans have digital interactions with their favourite celebrities through personalised celebrity video messages (shoutouts), direct messages on social media, video calls, merchandise, brand video endorsements and more.

About Kalaari Capital

Kalaari Capital is an early-stage, technology-focused venture capital firm. It invests across Seed and Series A startups and empower visionary entrepreneurs to build unique solutions that reshape the way Indians live, work, consume and transact.