Radish Fiction founder, Korean VC make debut India bets on Headfone

Headfone, a social audio platform, on Tuesday said it has raised Rs 22 crore ($3 million) as part of its Series A funding round.

Headfone said in a statement that the funding was led by South Korean-based venture capital firm Hashed and Seung Yoon Lee, founder of mobile serial fiction app Radish Fiction backed by SoftBank Ventures Asia. 

This is the first investment of Hashed in India. It also marks Radish Fiction founder's debut bet in the country.

Existing investors Axilor Ventures and Fosun RZ Capital also participated in Headfone's funding round, it added.

The Bengaluru-based startup, which is operated by Diacoustic Labs Pvt Ltd, will use the funds to scale up business and boost operations.

Headfone was founded in 2017 by Pratham Khandelwal and Yogesh Sharma, who are ex-Facebook employees.  

The company says anybody can record, share and listen to audio content on its platform. The firm claims its Android app has been downloaded by over 50 lakh users across India, around 70% of them from Tier-II and III cities.

The audio content platform space has attracted venture capital and strategic attention in the past few years.

Last year, Vertex Ventures led a Series A funding round in online audio platform Kuku FM that had previously raised funding from Shunwei Capital, India Quotient and 3one4 Capital.

In October 2019, income-tax return e-filing startup ClearTax acquired streaming platform Dose FM.