India’s Bluegape adopts a Quora cum Buzzfeed model, raises funding

Within three months of pivoting from a fan merchandise store to a user-driven content generating platform, Bluegape has raised INR 12 million (US$200,000) from Mumbai-based angel network ah! Ventures. The round was led by Fidelity India executive Rudy Gopalakrishnan who shelled out INR 10 million (US$160,000).

Bluegape’s platform allows users to make collaborative listicles with visuals and embed them on other sites. It’s a mix of Quora and BuzzFeed wherein the startup has a user-generated content creation model like that of Quora and a social media-oriented consumption model similar to that of BuzzFeed.

“We are clocking 4 million page views per day and aim to increase this to 30 million by the year-end,” says Sahil Baghla, co-founder and CEO, Bluegape in a press statement.

He says that the site generates over 200 listicles per day on the platform.

In India, the online media space has been simmering with activity. A number of sites have raised funding over the last one year. Some of these include ScoopWhoop which raised US$1.6 million from Bharti Softbank, News In Shorts raised US$4 million from Tiger Global, and Scroll raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Omidyar Network and New York based Media Development Investment Fund.

Bluegape, a three-year-old startup, is one of several dozen ecommerce casualties in India, before it pivoted. It was a TLabs incubated company and had raised $300,000 through equity based crowdfunding platform LetsVenture.