Akshay Kumar, Rana Daggubati, Collective Artists and Mahesh Bhupathi backed Social Swag, raises $3.5 million

Social Swag, a new age content platform which is a collective brainchild of Akshay Kumar, Rana Daggubati Collective Artists and Mahesh Bhupathi, has raised $3.5 million in a pre-Series A round. IMEF and Unicorn India Ventures led the round, which has made its maiden announcement in a content creator economy specialist platform.

Some other HNI's who participated in the round are Vinay Agarwal, Ritesh Deshmukh, Raghu Subramanian, Edward Menezes, The Shekama Family Trust, and The Blume Founders fund.

Social Swag, which was founded in 2020 and is developing a celebrity/influencer commerce platform, has been expanding at a 40 percent m-o-m rate for the last five months and is poised to continue this trajectory as the online story in India continues to generate exciting outcomes.

Parth Gandhi who launched IMEF as an entertainment fund says, "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."

Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, says, "As a fund, we strongly believe that the content creator economy is ripe for explosive growth. 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."

Masterclasses, live learning, and personal shout outs are just a few of the verticals that Social Swag offers. The company is based on a subscription model that allows users to have unlimited access to the curated content on the platform. Lara Dutta, Bhavish Aggarwal, Abhinav Bindra, Akshay Kumar, Vicky Ratnani, and Avinash Gowarikar are some of of the well-known people whose masterclasses are currently available on the platform. Social Swag aspires to build the biggest content platform which is made in India for the world.

Rana Daggubatti, an accomplished actor, entrepreneur & Co founder, Social Swag, says, "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, India has around 1,50,000 skilled content creators who are able to monetize their services. The global economy of content creators is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion. Because the platform is backed by some of India's most accomplished content creators and artists, Social Swag is well positioned to build its market leadership.

SNK Advisors advised Social Swag on the transaction.