Venture Catalysts leads funding in performing arts platform STAGE

Catchup Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates hyperlocal over-the-top (OTT) platform STAGE, has raised Rs 8.5 crore (approximately $1.15 million at current exchange rates) in a funding round led by startup incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts.

STAGE was set up by Vinay Singhal, Shashank Vaishnav, and Parveen Singhal. It originally began life in 2014 as WittyFeed, a content curation website, before pivoting to its current model last year.

The OTT platform says it features art forms such as folk, poetry, storytelling, comedy, and motivational content in local languages and dialects such as Haryanvi, Bundelkhand, Rajasthani, and Konkani. It will also feature information-based satirical content.

The platform will use the capital it has raised to accelerate its content creation and scale distribution to reach at least two million users, Singhal said.

STAGE says it is currently at a pre-revenue stage and plans to launch subscription-based monetization by the end of January next year.