Chai Bisket raises $5 M Seed funding from Infoedge Ventures, General Catalyst
In a seed round led by InfoEdge Ventures and General Catalyst, Hyderabad-based microdrama over-the-top (OTT) platform Chai Bisket raised $5 million to launch Chai Shots, a mobile-only, regionally first microdrama OTT platform.
Rana Daggubati, co-founders of Swiggy Sri Harsha Majety and Nandan Reddy, founder of redBus Phanindra Sama, co-founder of Darwinbox Rohit Chennamaneni, co-founders of PhysicsWallah Alakh Pandey and Prateek, co-founders of Rapido, and founder of Virgio were among the exceptional group of angel investors who participated in the round.
Chai Shots offers premium, emotionally charged storytelling in regional languages in two-minute episodes of fiction, targeting Gen Z and tier II–III viewers. The platform, which is designed for individual mobile viewing, intends to start in Telugu before expanding to Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada.
Anurag Reddy, Krishna Mohan Varma, and Sharath Chandra are co-leading the new platform. Varma has joined as a co-founder to spearhead the technology vision. Chai Shots is a content-meets-tech platform that focuses on short-form fictional storytelling, in contrast to user-generated short video platforms. It is expected to release more than 100 original shows in the first six months.
Similar startup Flick TV raised $2.3 million in seed funding last month, with Titan Capital and Gemba Capital joining Stellaris Venture Partners. Additionally, Reel Saga, Reelies, QuickTV from ShareChat, and Kuku TV from Kuku FM will compete with Chai Shots.
