AI Content Marketing Platform Narrato Raises $1 Mn Pre-seed from AirTree Ventures, The Fund and Prominent Angels

Narrato allows users to to use generative AI to ideate, create, collaborate and publish all in one place; acquires impressive line-up of customers

AI content creation and collaboration platform Narrato today announced a $1M pre-seed round, led by AirTree Ventures, a leading venture capital firm with a portfolio of breakout tech companies including Canva, Linktree, Immutable and Employment Hero among others. The round also saw participation from community powered global venture fund TheFund and several marquee angel investors, including Ruchi Kalra and Bhuvan Gupta, co-founders of OfBusiness, and Shreesha Ramdas, a serial entrepreneur. The company said it will use the funds to further develop and enhance its platform and simultaneously invest in marketing to penetrate further in the US market.

Narrato’s platform allows users to use generative AI to ideate, create, collaborate and publish content all in one place. The startup was founded in January 2022 by serial entrepreneur Sophia Solanki, with over 16 years of experience in the content and marketing space. The company already counts an impressive line-up of clients including Chargebee, Preply, Zepto, Park+, and Rocketlane, among others.

The content marketing sector is estimated to grow by $584 billion between 2022 and 2027, but as the downturn has caused companies to be more cost-conscious, marketers feel the pressure to create more content but with limited resources. Content creation is effort intensive and time-consuming, a problem that Narrato is solving with generative AI as assistive tech.

“Customers have often told us how difficult and expensive it is to scale their content processes, while ensuring both quality and efficiency. Although there are point solutions to create content through generative AI, there is a big opportunity to deeply embed this capability into existing marketing workflows,” said Sophia Solanki, founder of Narrato. “We have built Narrato to be the AI-powered content workspace where companies can bring their entire marketing workflow and use AI seamlessly at the right moments.”

At the core of Narrato is the AI content assistant which assists with ideation, creation (text and image content generation) and optimization. Narrato workflow and automation features help teams create more content efficiently and collaboratively, saving money and time. “Having already built and sold another AI content SaaS startup and scaled my earlier agency to thousands of customers, I have first-hand seen the impact that content and AI can deliver to fuel demand generation and growth,” Sophia added. “I have also experienced the pain of managing and scaling content creation with the distributed software stack.”

“At AirTree we love to be right by a founder's side, right from the start of their journey and we’re thrilled to be leading Narrato’s pre-seed round,” said Elicia McDonald, partner at AirTree. “Having identified the massive opportunity for generative AI in content marketing and already successfully built two companies in this space, Sophia knows the market inside out. She has a strong connection to the problem and has achieved impressive traction for a company at such an early stage, especially considering they’ve bootstrapped to date.”

Businesses have increasingly seen the impacts of content marketing in the last decade; It has a better ROI than paid marketing, is more cost effective than expensive advertising, and makes more sense in the present marketing landscape. Using Narrato’s AI content workspace, Preply has already seen a jump of 40% in its content production and has greatly benefited from the streamlined experience Narrato has brought to their content workflow. Rocketlane has seen a similar impact on their content creation process with generative AI reducing their content’s time to market significantly.

For more information on Narrato and to learn more about its range of AI and workspace capabilities, please visit narrato.io.

About Narrato:

Narrato is an AI content creation and collaboration platform that allows users to ideate, create, collaborate and publish all in one place. Marketers and creators can create winning content collaboratively as Narrato turbo-boosts the entire content creation journey. At the core of Narrato is the AI content assistant which assists with content ideation, creation (text and image content generation) and optimization. Narrato workflow and automation features help content teams create content faster, more efficiently and collaboratively (saving a lot of $ and resource time). No more distributed software stack, no more sub-optimal, patched content workflows. Learn more at narrato.io.

Flickstree Raises $5 Mn in its Pre-Series B funding round, led by Venture Catalysts and 9 Unicorns

Flickstree, a content and marketing technology startup secured investment led by Venture Catalysts Group, India’s first incubator and largest accelerator for startups and 9 Unicorns, in its pre-series B round of funding. Flickstree creates AI-based editorial video content for video commerce.

Flickstree is a content led video commerce platform that enables transactions for their brand partners, leveraging in house video content, created using patented AI. The platform uses AI voiceover, AI script, and auto-generates branded video content. These videos are distributed through its own apps and websites such as PlusYou Club, and a network of more than 150 publisher partners. Flickstree currently has an active client base in India, Middle East, South-East Asia, UK, Australia and USA.

Reflecting on leading the funding round for Flickstree, Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Co-Founder, Venture Catalysts & 9Unicorns said, “Flickstree uses the power of Artificial Intelligence to create the most compelling branded video content at scale, at no-cost for brands. Moreover, they use their data engine to promote these videos that keeps churning transactions on an auto-pilot mode. In sum, Brands get videos at no cost and consumers love watching these videos and buy their products and services. This makes it a win-win platform for all brands globally.”

"Content driven ecommerce is the fastest growing segment of online sales across Asia," said William Bao Bean Managing Director Orbit Startups and General Partner SOSV "Flickstree is the leader in India and now positioned to expand across the region helping brands to leverage video to drive sales."

Flickstree is a global product with an extremely asset lite plug-and-play model. Its inception took place in 2016. The company was started by Saurabh Singh, Rahul Jain and Nagendra Sandra, who hold a combined domain experience of over 30 years. With a team that specializes in the fields of branding, sales & distribution, digital marketing, machine learning and artificial intelligence technology, the company caters to over 200 brands worldwide, driving transactions over $50 million annually and boasts an active user base of 25 million on its platform.

On securing funds in the pre-series B round, Saurabh Singh, CEO of Flickstree said, “Consumers love watching video content before making transactions. That’s why content-led commerce is the future of e-commerce. Flickstree’s AI creates great content that consumers love to watch and transact, making this a cutting-edge platform to partner with, for all e-commerce brands worldwide.”

In its pre-series B round of funding, Flickstree secured US $5 million, which it plans to utilize for global expansion, along with strengthening its product and technology. It is also backed by Samsung Ventures, Orbit Startups (SOSV), LionRock Capital, FULD & Co., Lets Venture, AB Claymore, Angelbay, amongst others.

About Flickstree

Flickstree, a video commerce company, was founded by Saurabh Singh, Rahul Jain, and Nagender Sangra in 2016. Flickstree creates editorial video content using AI. It then

promotes these videos to drive sales using world class in-house data engine. With over 25 million monthly active users driving over 150 thousand transactions per month, Flickstree works with over 200 brands worldwide driving transactions over $50 million annually.

About Venture Catalysts

enture Catalysts is India’s 1st integrated incubator for startups. It combines capital, mentoring and network for startups and has a presence in 47 cities across India with international presence in UAE, HK, UK, USA, Canada and Singapore. Venture Catalysts invests in the range of INR 2 - 15 crores per startup through a network of HNIs, Family Offices, CXOs, etc.

AI-powered SEO/ Content Marketing Platform Scalenut Raises $3.1 Mn from Saama Capital and Amit Singhal

Co-Founders (L to R) Gaurav Goyal, Saurabh Wadhawan & Mayank Jain

Scalenut powers organic content for businesses via AI platform as it raises $3.1M funding round

The fast-growing AI-powered SEO & content marketing platform witnessed over 10x growth since its launch.

Businesses know that content is king when charming customers but as channels and types of content have exponentially grown, it will be important to know which content is winning customers. AI-powered SEO and content marketing platform Scalenut is prevailing through its AI-generated organic content for SMBs and mid-market businesses with 100,000 users signed up in just a few months since going live this year. As it scales the platform and expands into new geographies, Scalenut is today announcing a $3.1M seed plus funding round led by Saama Capital & Amit Singhal (Former Senior VP of Google and Head of Google Search).

The company had previously raised $400,000 in seed funding led by Titan Capital, First Principles VC, AngelList, Abhishek Goyal, and other leading angel investors. In early 2022, they launched their SaaS platform for public use, and in the past six months, they have seen 10X revenue growth.

Scalenut, focusing primarily on the US and the UK markets, helps businesses and brands plan, research and create content in 1/5th the time it normally takes. In addition, it reduces costs by 90% and significantly scales up content production.

Scalenut’s Co-founder Mayank Jain said, “The pandemic spurred rapid digitization across businesses, with a greater emphasis being placed on digital marketing. However, after spending a huge amount of money on paid advertising for growth, they realized that it is not sustainable in the long run and therefore, there has been an increased focus on organic marketing to grow sustainably.”

He added “In order to increase organic growth, SEO and content marketing teams juggle multiple tools for sound SEO research, content creation, optimization, and performance measurement. Not only is it inefficient, but it also leads to siloed team efforts based on broken insights and incomplete strategy. This is why most businesses struggle to scale content marketing successfully.”

Scalenut’s AI platform brings everything needed by them to one place so they can strategize and scale easily and at a pace that helps them achieve business goals.

“With Scalenut, we aim to empower the SEO and content teams to put the paddle on their organic marketing efforts from a single platform and help businesses grow sustainably,” said Mayank Jain.

As per a Databox study, almost 20% of marketers get more than 60% of their traffic from search engines i.e. organic traffic, and 71% of the marketers said that creating new content is their most important tactic for growing their organic traffic.

Commenting on the successful closing of the funding round, Mayank Jain commented, “This funding is to continue building the platform, hiring talent, and expanding to new geographies. We have set our sights on solving a massive problem that marketers across the world face today. The opportunity in the market and our progress so far excites us to work harder and make a dent in this domain”.

“Businesses associated with us have witnessed 3x growth in their organic traffic in just 3-4 months. Not only have we seen 10x growth in revenue in the last six months, but we are also trending at a seven-digit revenue run rate right now. We are in a hyper-growth stage and are on track to meet our major revenue milestones.”

Talking about investing in Scalenut, Ash Lilani, managing partner at Saama Capital said, “With content consumption increasing worldwide, content is a key driver for business growth. One common problem that businesses face to power up their organic marketing is scaling content meaningfully. There is no easy way to scale content and Scalenut is solving precisely that with its robust AI platform. This is a big value add. Since launching its SaaS platform in Jan 2022, Scalenut has seen good traction with over 100,000 registered users. We were quite impressed seeing the product team has built and the market response they have got.”

Amit Singhal, Former Senior VP of Google and Head of Google Search, said “There is no one better than Scalenut to help businesses scale organic traffic. With deep domain expertise and passion to help businesses grow sustainably, I am super excited to be part of the team. Their recent growth has validated our belief and I am super excited for what’s in the store.”

Meme Community App MemeChat Enhances Content Monetisation, Launches Instant Withdrawal

Empowering the meme community worldwide, MemeChat (MC), the country’s only meme community social media app has introduced instant monetization for its creators. Being the first ever brand to introduce instant withdrawal, a meme creator can withdraw Rs 1000 unlimited times in a single day.

As per the report, India, with 700-750 million users, has the world’s second-largest and fastest-growing Internet user base. Indians, on average, spend 38 minutes per day watching short-form content. However, the withdrawal option provided by mobile applications via IMPS or NEFT is a gestation period of around 3-7 days.

The instant withdrawal feature by MC can be accessed through the updated reward section which will provide access to movie tickets, giveaways, scratch cards, and brand vouchers which a creator will achieve by completing various tasks.

Speaking on the development, Kyle Fernandes, CEO and Co-Founder MemeChat said, “Our aim is to help the creator ecosystem realise the economic value of their community. We are driven to build an ecosystem that is both economically sustainable and progressive. Such initiatives will help enable creation and experimentation; acknowledging and reward performance and connect creators with economic opportunities like branded content. This is how talent across India will become visible to audiences nationally.”

Over the last three years, MemeChat has successfully built one of the largest meme communities in the country. With over 12 million+ downloads and over 30 million memes generated on the application, MemeChat continuously innovates to stay true to the motto of - Make Memes Earn Money. In addition to the feature of instant withdrawal, MC also empowers the ever-growing meme creator community by monetizing memes on The Meme Club - An NFT Marketplace.

About MemeChat:

MemeChat is an application that was launched in 2019. MemeChat has emerged as one of the most popular homegrown social media networking apps for Generation Z and millennials. The app gathered a dedicated following in just a year with more than 1.2 million monthly active users (current user base of 12 million+ Downloads) and over 30 million memes.

MemeChat has officially worked with top Indian OTT platforms like Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, Moj, Sharechat, EaseMyTrip, McDonald's, India Terrain, Slice, MediBuddy, PVR, NiyoX, MxPlayer, Paytm, Netflix, Zee5, and Codashop, creating their user-generated memes.

MemeChat recently secured more than USD 1 million in its second round of funding led by Beenext, a Singapore-based venture capital firm., became the only Indian startup to be included in the '500 Startups, one of the most active global venture capital firms’, a distinguished accelerator program for its 27th batch in 2020. The company recently launched India’s 1st exclusive NFT Marketplace for Memes called The Meme Club.

Indore Based WittyFeed Revamps Its Brand Identity; Launches New User Interface

WittyFeed, content marketing company has rebranded itself and launched a new user interface. The brand also relaunched its logo, tagline, and its look and feel keeping the new vision and brand philosophy in mind. WittyFeed, as a platform has been creating content that is engaging, interactive and has helped various brands by its subtle integration, allowing them to reach its target audience in the best possible formats.

The new version of WittyFeed modeled on the philosophy of "beyond" truly depicts the same in its new avatar. New WittyFeed, apart from being a mere content platform, will showcase thoughts which are”beyond stories”. The upgraded version of WittyFeed will also get to see a new logo and an even more exciting website. 

The old version of WittyFeed website has been there since the inception of the company in 2014, but WittyFeed has been upgrading the interface and technology as per the market needs time to time. Now the brand has decided to revamp the complete UI (User Interface) by acquiring the latest yet futuristic modalities to empower the brands to communicate with its target audience in a more interactive manner.

Commenting on the development, Vinay Singhal, Co-founder and CEO, WittyFeed said, “We have been all ears to our users and advisors and have been receiving constant feedback on the fronted and backend admin, in this new update we have made sure to adapt newer modalities which will not only help users discover more content but also would be allowing brands to engage with the TG in best possible formats. The new Logo, UI and brand punchline is been designed keeping in mind the continued vision and goal to deliver everything beyond!We are very excited to revamp ourselves.”

It is headquartered in Indore (India) and was founded by Vinay Singhal (CEO) along with two co-founders, Parveen Singhal and Shashank Vaishnav, as Vatsana Technologies.

In terms of campaign virality, they have adopted newer technologies which would further help brands track their campaigns in a more efficient way. With their already existing platform and analytics gathered over past few years, Singhal and his team is sure to get more engagement and help in discovering the content that is trending on the internet and deliver a beyond experience.