Venture capital firm SOSV leads funding round in online gig marketplace Joynt

Bengaluru-based online gig marketplace Joynt has raised an undisclosed amount led by Princeton, New Jersey headquartered venture capital fund SOSV and its accelerator programme Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX). 

Family office Omphalos Ventures India, also headquartered in Bengaluru, participated in the round, a statement said.

The company, whose video-first marketplace helps people discover talented individuals, aims to acquire more users and generate a significant revenue stream for the talent community with capital from the latest funding round, it said.

“Despite having so many platforms, talent across India is still struggling to be discovered. This is because the existing platforms don’t address the issues of trust and authenticity. We bridge that gap by being video-first, not text-first,” Gaurav Tripathi, co-founder and CEO of Joynt, said.

Joynt will participate in the eighth cohort of MOX later this year. The programme will choose ten startups, each of whom will receive $100,000 to $120,000 in funding from SOSV.

The cohort currently includes four Indian startups -- identity and personal data management platform Verismart, procurement management platform Supplynote, literature startup Pencil and government-citizen communication platform CivilCops.

The investment in Joynt is SOSV’s fourth one in India this year. The venture capital fund has invested in content startup Instoried, video publisher Flickstree and automation platform Unbox Robotics. Between April 1, 2018 and March 31, 2019, SOSV has invested in 24 Indian startups,making it one of the most active investors in India, according to Crunchbase data.

Apart from IIT Bombay alumnus Tripathi, Joynt was set up in 2019 by IIT Kharagpur alumni Vivek Kumar and Vijay Goel, and ILS Law College graduate Sagar Ramteke. The platform allows professionals from entertainment to art designing sectors post selfie videos to offer their services for paying gigs. It claims that professionals get 75% of the earnings within 48 hours of booking.