Anand Mahindra bets $1 million on social network provider Hapramp

Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra has invested $1 million in new-age social media platform provider Hapramp Studio, according to a statement from the startup’s incubator Huddle. 

The development comes a little over two years after the conglomerate’s head expressed his interest in wanting to back a social networking company that was well-regulated on data privacy issues. This was around the same time that the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal had been exposed.

Took 2 yrs, but I finally found the start-up I was looking for! @Hapramp is indigenous, built by 5 young founders & brings together a best-in-class combination of creativity, technology & data protection. Look out for @gosocial_app their social networking platform. @j_bindra https://t.co/9mFwzjQXjF

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) June 10, 2020

The fundraise is a seed-stage investment, Huddle’s co-founder Ishaan Khosla told TechCircle.

Khosla said that the startup has been bootstrapped by the founders from day one, adding that Gurugram-based Huddle helped the team with loans for marketing activities.

The raised funds, Khosla added, will be used in technology hiring, marketing and to increase product capacity across Hapramp’s three service offerings -- GoSocial, a creator-led online community; 1Ramp.io, a cryptocurrency-based reward system for creators; and Asteria Protocol, a security and privacy standard.

While GoSocial is active, Hapramp expects to take 1Ramp.io and Asteria Protocol to market in 2021.

“Moving forward, the growth plans include a large focus on India, and then expanding to Southeast Asia, with a target of one million users by the end of this year for GoSocial. Outside of this, the team will also actively work to bring Asteria Protocol to market, which will open up newer markets like Europe and the US further,” Khosla added.

The Gurugram-based startup was founded in 2018 by five batchmates from the class of Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Vadodara -- Pratyush Singh, Mofid Ansari, Ankit Kumar, Shubhendra Vikram and Rajat Dangi.

“This (fundraise) is a massive approval of our mission to give creators the right to their content. We see ourselves as an idea lab working on the ideas that emerge from the confluence of the creative industry and information economy,” Hapramp CEO and co-founder Vikram said. 

Sector-agnostic startup incubator Huddle’s portfolio of 25 ventures includes healthtech startup Wellversed Health, Internet of Things (IoT) startup Trillbit, and electric mobility startups Cell Propulsion and RACEnergy.

 According to VCCEdge, the last time that Anand Mahindra bet in a startup in 2017 when he invested in two startups -- Thinkerbell Labs, a braille based education technology provider and edtech provider Alphabyte (now called LeapLearner India).