Chingari ropes in Salman Khan as brand ambassador, investor

Homegrown short video platform Chingari on Friday said Bollywood actor Salman Khan has come on board as brand ambassador and investor.

"This is a really significant partnership for Chingari, our ethos is to reach out to every state of Bharat and it's our pleasure to have Salman Khan on-board as one of our global brand ambassadors and investors," Chingari co-founder and CEO Sumit Ghosh said.

He expressed confidence that the association will power Chingari to scale greater heights in the near future.

Details of investment made by Khan were not disclosed.

Talking about the association, Salman Khan said Chingari has focused on adding value to its consumers and content creators.

"I like how Chingari has shaped up in such a short span of time, a platform for millions from rural to urban to showcase their unique talents and be seen by another millions in no time," he added.

Deepak Salvi, co-founder and COO of Chingari said he believes the actor's mass appeal will help the app attract more users onto the platform.

"Chingari has always focused on empowering the content creators and builds on its strategy to continuously bring exciting content for all users with more relevant and robust features, for the larger Bharat," he added.

On Wednesday, OnMobile Global Ltd said it has led a USD 13 million ( ₹98.7 crore) funding round in Chingari.

Other investors who participated in this round include Republic Labs US, Astarc Ventures, White Star Capital, India TV (Rajat Sharma), JPIN Venture Catalysts Ltd, ProfitBoard Ventures, and some large family office funds from the UK.

Last year, Chingari had raised over USD 1.4 million from investors like Angel list, iSeed, Village Global, Blume Founders Fund, Jasminder Singh Gulati and others.

OnMobile has said the latest investment will allow Chingari to accelerate its growth from 56 million users to over 100 million users.

Chingari will also use the funds to enhance its content portfolio and hire top talent.

Tech4Billion Media owns the Chingari app that allows users to upload videos in 14 languages including English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Odia, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.

Chingari app was first launched on the Google Play Store in November 2018 and later rebranded and redesigned in June 2020.

The app had witnessed a massive surge in its user base last year after the Indian government banned 59 apps with Chinese linkages, including Chingari's rival TikTok.

Since the ban, several homegrown apps like Roposo, Chingari and Josh (Dailyhunt) have seen significant growth in downloads and user signups on their platforms.

Facebook-owned Instagram had also joined the race with Reels, while YouTube pitched its India-first "Shorts" to fill the void created after the ban of TikTok in the country.