The art of monetizing art: this Indian startup is a marketplace for artists

The global art market raked in about US$54 billion in sales in 2014, surpassing the pre-recession sales figure record in 2007 – US$51 billion. It might be good news for artists around the world, but not everyone can be a Gerhard Richter or a Jasper Johns, with their paintings being auctioned at millions of dollars. But most artists have a hard time finding a platform to display their work and earn a modest living, especially the budding ones. Every platform they get is a potential marketplace for them. This Indian startup called PosterGully provides one such avenue.

It’s a curated marketplace for artists and designers to monetize their artworks. An artist can upload his/her original artwork on PosterGully and consumers across the world can buy a wide range of merchandise such as phone cases, art prints, home décor, and clothing based on that design.

The artist or designer doesn’t have to invest anything; the company produces the merchandise, on-demand, through vendors across India. The company handles everything from technology, customer support, and logistics, and the contributors earn the revenue share on their sold designs.

“The designs are checked for originality through reverse-image engineering and the profile of the artist is also verified by the moderation team,” says Bharat Sethi, PosterGully’s founder and CEO.

The art of funding

PosterGully was incorporated in July 2013 but it started gaining traction only during early 2014. It was accelerated at GSF and was backed by industry veterans like Murugavel J, founder and CEO of BharatMatrimony, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of PayTM, and Roshan Abbas, an Indian actor and director. It raised US$40,000 through GSF in January last year.

It recently raised an undisclosed amount from a group of angel investors through LetsVenture, an organization that enables startups to raise seed/angel funding and help them create investment-ready online profiles and connect with prospective investors.

“Raising on LetsVenture intensified the fact that we have to approach fundraising as a ‘sales cycle’, except in this case we’re not selling just our products but our company. It helped us with its database of investors and assisted us with finding the right investors. It took us around six months from the first commit to the last wire,” Sethi tells Tech in Asia.

The round was led by Natarajan Iyer, a former consultant at Egon Zehnder. Other prominent investors who participated in this round included Rajesh Sawhney, co-founder of InnerChef and founder of the GSF Accelerator, and Anuj Chowdhary, the ex VP of operations at Flipkart.

According to Sethi, the funding will be mainly used for hiring, marketing, growing the authentic artist community, expanding the product mix, and building a mobile presence.

Let’s get a bigger poster!