Former Facebook employees’ social audio startup secures $3m in series A round

Social audio platform Headfone announced it has raised 220 million rupees (US$3 million) in its series A round led by South Korea-based VC firm Hashed and Seung Yoon Lee, founder of serialized fiction startup Radish Fiction.

Headfone co-founders Yogesh Sharma (left) and Pratham Khandelwal

Existing investors including Axilor Ventures and Fosun RZ Capital also participated in the funding round.

Founded in 2017 by former Facebook software engineers Pratham Khandelwal and Yogesh Sharma, Headfone is a social audio platform where anyone can record, share, and listen to audio stories. It connects podcasters, storytellers, artists, musicians, and motivational speakers to listeners, and also works with writers, voice-over artists, sound engineers, and musicians to produce original audio series on the platform.

Funds raised from the financing round will be used to fuel the company’s business operations.

“Audio content is very different from video or text content because of how easy it is to engage with. The fact that we can engage with it while we perform other tasks makes it particularly appealing to consume throughout the day,” said Pratham Khandelwal, CEO of Headfone.

The India-based company claims that its Android application has been downloaded by over 5 million users across India, with 70% of its user base distributed across tier 2 and tier 3 cities. The company also engages over 100,000 content creators on its platform.

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“When a social app is working, it is often clear in the data. Young generations in India are sharing stories and discovering creators they love through Headfone,” said Simon Seojoon Kim, CEO of Hashed. “In a diverse country in terms of both culture and language such as India, user-generated audio content is bringing the community together to connect.”

Headfone is also set to capitalize on the growing need for audio content in India, where an average user devotes about 21.5 hours per week listening to music against the global average of 17.8 hours.