| Brand | STAGE |
| Company Name | STAGE OTT Platform |
| Founders | Parveen Singhal, Vinay Singhal, Shashank Vaishnav |
| Original Ask | Rs. 3 crores for 1% equity at a valuation of Rs. 300 crores. |
| Deal | 1.5 crores for 0.6% equity and 1.5 crores debt 18% interest rate at the valuation of 250 crores. |
About the Product
STAGE is the country’s first regional dialect OTT platform where you can find movies, web series & a lot more in regional dialects. This OTT platform supports different languages.
India has more than 19000 dialects, but our movies & web series are in only a few languages. Hence, STAGE started with Haryanvi content in 2019, and within a short time, it became a local movie industry.
The subscription cost to watch STAGE content is Rs. 400 per year. They also started making content in Rajasthani three months back. The platform has 100% original content made by local artists for local people.
Their web series has between 6 and 8 episodes, each lasting between 25 and 30 minutes. Among the various Haryanvi online series that STAGE has created, some examples are Group-D, College Kaand, Akhada, Opri Parai, and others.
You can download their app from the play store & watch videos and viral content featuring local artists from Haryana and Rajasthan.
Founders & their story
Parveen Singhal
Vinay Singhal
Shashank Vaishnav
All of the founders had a previous business venture called WittyFeed which they lost suddenly. So, they went back to their villages & gradually realised that there were over 19,500 dialects in the country and the potential to create content around the same had not been tapped into. It also made them aware of the possibility of developing a hyper-local OTT platform that targets vernacular audiences.
Their research revealed that no films or web series are made in any other languages apart from a few, even though a significant number of the population speaks other languages.
Resulting which, they developed the ‘InnerVoice’ platform, where they began collaborating with upcoming artists and talent from all across the country and giving them a stage to showcase their work.
Currently, InnerVoice has transformed into an over-the-top (OTT) platform known as STAGE.
About the company:
STAGE was launched in November 2019. Since its launch, it has provided jobs to over 1,000 local artists and produced more than 300 hours of original content in Haryanvi and Rajasthani with these Haryanvi actors, with over 1.3 lakh paid subscribers.
STAGE is based in Noida, but all 40 employees work from home in different parts of the country. The OTT platform situated in Delhi debuted the Rajasthani dialect in June 2022. A good product-market-fit and customer love supported this launch.
Its vision is to become a place where all dialect-speaking people in the country can watch web series or movies to have fun, connect, and celebrate their cultures through their content. They plan to launch in the top 20 dialects of the country by 2027, which could reach more than 200 million homes.
Amounts Raised:
- Rs. 10 crores at a pre-money valuation of Rs. 65 crores in 2020
- Rs. 20 crores at a pre-money valuation of Rs. 80 crores in 2021
- Rs. 36 crores at a pre-money valuation of Rs. 250 crores in 2022
Revenue:
Their business model revolves around subscriptions with a subscription cost of Rs. 400 per year.
Currently, they have 1,30,000 paid subscribers, and their retention rate after 4 weeks is 94%. On average, people watch for 4.5 hours each month.
In FY 21–22, sales were Rs. 3.85 crores. Their monthly sales are Rs. 25 lacs per month. The CAC was around Rs. 800, which has now come down to Rs. 270.
About 10% of people get here on their own. Their monthly burn is 1.10 crores, of which 60 lakhs are spent on content, 20 lakhs on the team, and 10 lakhs on miscellaneous costs like marketing & events.
Founder’s Ask
Rs. 3 crores for 1% equity at a valuation of Rs. 300 crores.
Offers:
Aman, Namita, and Piyush jointly offered Rs. 1.5 crores for 0.6% equity and 1.5 crores debt at 18% interest at a valuation of ₹250 crores.
Final Deal
The final deal was closed with Aman, Namita, and Piyush with 1.5 crores for 0.6% equity and 1.5 crores debt 18% interest rate at the valuation of 250 crores.
