Founded in 2022 by Shaurya Gupta, Divyansh Ameta, and Chandan Yadav, Wishlink connects content creators, consumers, and ecommerce brands through a seamless discovery-to-purchase journey. Previously, the startup raised $7 million in February 2024 from Fundamentum and Elevation Capital, and since then, it has continued to scale rapidly across India’s creator commerce ecosystem.

Wishlink enables consumers to discover and buy products recommended by their favourite creators directly from leading e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Nykaa, Meesho, and Shopsy. Moreover, the platform operates entirely on top of social media networks like Instagram and YouTube, which allows it to tap into existing user behaviour instead of forcing audiences to adopt a new content platform.

Co-founder Divyansh Ameta explained that many earlier attempts at content commerce struggled because they tried to build standalone platforms from day one. In contrast, Wishlink focused on integrating commerce where creator-led engagement already thrives, and as a result, the company aligned naturally with how Indian consumers discover products online.

For brands, Wishlink delivers end-to-end sales visibility and therefore enables precise tracking of which products, categories, and price points resonate most with a specific creator’s audience. This data-driven approach helps brands run more targeted collaborations and improve return on marketing spend, while creators benefit from transparent monetisation.

The company plans to deploy the newly raised capital to strengthen its technology stack across creators, brands, and consumers. Accordingly, Wishlink will build advanced editing and monetisation tools for creators, deepen performance intelligence for brands, and simplify the checkout experience for shoppers. Additionally, the creator commerce startup will expand its sales and technology teams to onboard more brands and creators at scale.

Commenting on the investment, Nikhil Marwaha, Partner at Vertex Ventures SEA and India, noted that consumer buying behaviour is rapidly shifting toward influencer-led discovery and purchase. He added that Wishlink stands out because of its technology-enabled platform and strong focus on creator retention, which together deliver meaningful value to brands and consumers alike.

Currently, Wishlink reports over 40,000 monthly active creators who generate more than 300,000 pieces of content every month. These creators collectively drive over 6 million orders and contribute to more than Rs 350 crore in monthly sales for partner brands and e-commerce platforms. Furthermore, the creator base spans micro-influencers to large creators with millions of followers across Tier II, III, and IV cities, which underscores the platform’s deep reach beyond metro markets.

As influencer-led commerce commerce continues to reshape how Indians discover and purchase products, Wishlink’s latest funding round positions it strongly for the next phase of growth. By building commerce directly on top of social platforms and empowering creators with data and tools, the company is well placed to capitalise on the expanding creator economy and drive sustainable value for brands and consumers alike.

Now, nearly eight years later, the company is heavily investing in creating a social network and becoming more receptive to ads.

To support these goals, the newsletter publishing platform has secured $100 million in funding from investors such as the Chernin Group, known for its investments in sports and media; BOND, a tech investment firm; Klutch Sports Group founder Rich Paul; venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz; and fashion executive Jens Grede, co-founder of Skims. The funding round valued Substack at $1.1 billion, according to two people familiar with the deal.

Substack’s core model remains straightforward: users follow creators, and the company takes a 10% share of revenue from paid newsletter or podcast subscriptions. This writer-friendly approach fueled Substack’s early success, attracting over 5 million paid subscriptions and notable names like short-story writer George Saunders, historian Heather Cox Richardson, and many journalists leaving traditional newsrooms.

However, new backers are betting on a different growth engine: the Substack app, launched in 2022. It enables users to chat with creators, join live video conversations, and post through “Notes,” a feature similar to X or Bluesky.

The app now counts millions of users, which helps draw in more creators and subscribers, said CEO Chris Best and co-founder Hamish McKenzie. They also revealed plans to expand into advertising—a shift from the company’s earlier stance against it.

The newsletter publishing platform’s latest $1.1 billion valuation—a nearly 70% jump from its $650 million valuation in 2021—signals investor confidence in this new strategy.

“The network is growing,” McKenzie said. “We’re in this new phase where people can come to Substack and not just publish but also find new audiences and find new opportunities.” The company today is more interested in taking on YouTube than MailChimp.

The idea that Substack’s next stage of growth will rely on a social network and advertising may surprise some. McKenzie has long criticized both, condemning what he described as the “narrative frenzy” and “bedlam” fostered by toxic social media in posts on the platform. In another post, he labeled the ad model as “busted.”

He said in an interview that Substack embraced those models not as a change of heart but as “a recognition of new possibilities” enabled by the growth of the network and emphasized that Substack would not simply “copy and paste the old models that ruined social media.”

Substack’s investors are backing the company partly because of the promise these opportunities hold. In an interview, Mike Kerns, co-founder of the Chernin Group, said he believed it was “inevitable” the company would expand its advertising capabilities to benefit its writers.

“Their creators have told them that they want Substack to support advertising,” Kerns said. “We think it is a massive opportunity to launch a native form of advertising within the Substack ecosystem at some point.”

About two years ago, Substack’s co-founders scrapped plans to raise funds at a $1 billion valuation and cut roughly 14% of its workforce. Mood Rowghani, a general partner at BOND who co-led the latest funding round and will join Substack’s board, said the company anticipated several media trends—such as the rise of independent journalists—and simply needed time for those bets to pay off.

“Culturally, although some of these trends were certainly in motion, they weren’t at the level where they tipped the culture,” Rowghani said.

The funding round also had contributions from Parag Bhide, Sambhav Mehrotra, Sridhar Subramanian, Ravindra Yadav, and Sargun Gulati.

These funds will speed up Pep’s goal of organizing and making content accessible and affordable in various formats and categories. Pep aims to change how people find, buy, and create content.

“We are building a new-age content marketplace that is changing the way we consume or create content. With our mobile-only approach, we enable people to sell content in a few clicks, directly monetize their knowledge, and reduce dependency on conventional ad-based income. Using personalized machine learning algorithms, our consumers discover and buy the right set of content at affordable prices with a no-regret mindset,” said Nav Agrawal, co-founder and CEO of Pep.

Pep allows users to discover, buy, and earn from a variety of content and services, spanning live sessions, videos, one-on-one consultations, PDFs, and audio. It covers a wide range of interests, from cooking and DIY to fashion, devotion, health and fitness, and personal finance.

“We are excited to back Nav and Swapnil again to build the Amazon of digital goods and services. With the fast-paced digitization of the world around us, we see a huge Total Addressable Market (TAM) waiting to be unlocked,” said Madhukar Sinha, Partner of India Quotient.

With this seed funding, Pep is positioned to disrupt the digital content and services market, offering creators and consumers a curated platform to explore, share, and monetize their expertise.

Since its launch in 2018, Pocket FM has expanded to offer a variety of genres, languages, and content types to appeal to a variety of interests and age groups.

Speaking about this significant milestone, Prateek Dixit, Co-founder and CTO of Pocket FM, expressed his gratitude to its listener community, content creators, and the entire Pocket FM team. “We are thrilled to have surpassed 100 million downloads on the Google Play Store. This achievement is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team, as well as the immense support from our listeners. We are grateful to each and every person who has joined the Pocket FM community and made it a part of their daily audio entertainment experience.”

With a wide variety of content catered to different interests and age groups, Pocket FM has been at the forefront of innovation as the demand for audio content has continued to soar. The platform’s user-friendly interface, seamless streaming, and high-quality content have won over users all over the world. Additionally, Pocket FM has consistently made investments in developing and curating a substantial library of engaging and entertaining audio content.

Dixit further emphasized the company’s commitment to providing rich and diverse content to its listeners. “Pocket FM is dedicated to continuously enhancing its content library and offering a wide range of audio entertainment options. We believe in giving our listeners a platform where they can explore and indulge in a new entertaining experience with every click.”

Pocket FM, a leading audio entertainment platform, has significantly reshaped the global audio entertainment landscape with its audio series, which is similar to TV series and presented in a serialized fiction audio storytelling format. With its substantial listener base and ongoing growth, Pocket FM is poised to revolutionize how people consume entertainment in the digital age.

The company announced the update in a press release: “Koo is committed to building a safe and inclusive platform that provides users equal opportunities to express themselves and be heard.”

“The free lifetime verification will be available to all notable personalities and creators across the world; enabling them to build trust with followers, protect their reputation and avoid impersonation on the platform,” it added.

When a user profile meets the requirements specified on its website, Koo awards a user with a Yellow Tick. 

“At Koo, we care about being inclusive in thought and action. We provide free lifetime verification for all notable personalities that qualify as a mark of recognition and protect them from impersonators so that they can share their authentic voice with their followers. We are a merit-based platform and take pride in our platform’s transparent methodology that recognizes and celebrates eminence without a price tag. The Koo Eminence Tick is a prestigious symbol that cannot be bought and we are committed to safeguarding this digital right for all notable personalities,” said Mayank Bidawatka, Co-founder of Koo.

“We have concentrated our efforts for the last 3 years to create a microblogging 2.0 experience and have become the second largest microblog with over 60 million downloads from 100+ countries. Every stakeholder gains from being on Koo. We will never charge for a feature that the internet was supposed to provide for free. Platforms need to enable. Not extract.”

Koo offers several features with Yellow Tick that are all free of cost, including free edit functionality, a longer 500-character post, longer videos, the ability to post in 20+ global languages in one go, ChatGPT prompt, scheduling posts, creating drafts, monetization tools for creators, a loyalty programme for users, and proactive content moderation that is best in class among all social media platforms.

Koo users can apply for the verification check mark via the Koo website, follow the verification process, or directly write to eminence.verification@kooapp.com.

According to the company, the acquisition will increase the combined reach of the two platforms in India to over five million monthly enthusiasts.

This agreement will also use player performance data, including player performance statistics, player form, and auction-related information, to further develop and improve the kabaddi sports tech sector, according to the statement.

“Having the largest community and with sports tech-focused towards Kabaddi, the second most viewed sport in the country, we see vast opportunity in the sport,” said Vaibhav Jaiswal, Founder, and CEO of Sportzcraazy. “Sportzcraazy plans to work with kabaddi players through grass root engagement, enabling regional players to showcase their talent.”

According to Sportzcraazy, it aims to host kabaddi leagues and large-scale tournaments nationwide to create local and regional player opportunities.

Sportzcraazy covers the latest news and updates from across the world. Also, it promotes digital asset optimization and revenue generation for sports content creators.

Kabaddi Adda is a platform that offers in-depth coverage of Kabaddi and is founded in 2019 by Arvind Sivdas, Dhanya P, Suhail Chandhok, and Srikanth Viswanathan. It was the first sports company offered on Shark Tank, valued at Rs 13.33 crore.

New angel investors include cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, CRED Founder Kunal Shah, NoBroker Founder Amit Agarwal, Country Delight Founder Chakradhar Gade, and finance content creator Sharan Hegde, among others, also participated in the round.

Rigi has now successfully raised $25 million in three rounds of funding. It had previously raised $10 million in a Series A round of funding in April 2022.

The startup plans to expand its reach to new content categories and geographies with fresh capital. Currently, it focuses on gaming, skill training, health, and fitness, and it launched in Indonesia three months ago. 

Rigi offers access to various tools, including subscription management, paid workshops, live one-to-one classes, and integration with platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp.

“Generation one platforms like YouTube, Twitter, etc., have done their job well by giving a distribution platform to creators. Platforms like Rigi will help these creators monetize their distribution. We are not focused on more users or business,” said Swapnil Saurav, Co-founder of Rigi.

Rigi charges a commission on the course fee from the content creators. The courses include webinars with both pre-recorded and live content, with 60% of the platform’s content being recorded and hosted on Rigi’s servers for paying users. The platform typically works with creators with more than 50,000 Instagram or YouTube followers.

Microsoft Designer, Microsoft Clipchamp, Microsoft Create, and Image Creator are the names of the new tools. 

In Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), the “Microsoft Designer” graphic design programme enables users to make social media posts, invitations, digital postcards, graphics, and more.

The company claims that Microsoft Designer is AI-powered, so users won’t have to start from scratch when making cards or social media posts. 

Meanwhile, “Microsoft Climpchap” is a free video editor that allows content creators to quickly make any video (vlogs, reels, etc.). 

According to the company, Climpchap enables creators to make videos of a high calibre without the requirement for advanced editing skills. 

Furthermore, a brand-new website named “Microsoft Create” has been built to assist users in creating documents, presentations, videos, and graphic designs.

The website combines content creation apps from Designer to Clipchamp, PowerPoint, Word, and beyond.

“The ‘Microsoft Create’ website is live and available for anyone. We’ll continue to build new functionality and content into the site over time,” the company added.

Content creators can create images that don’t yet exist with the help of “Image Creator.”

Image Creator will let creators bring their ideas to life. The tech giant added that type in a description of something, any additional context like location or activity, an art style, and Image Creator will make it for you.