Most founder stories start with inspiration. Ours starts with devastation.
2014 — The Rise
Three friends from small-town India build a global platform
Vinay (Haryana), Parveen (Haryana), and Shashank (MP) meet at SRM University in Chennai. From a hostel room in Indore, they build WittyFeed — which becomes the world's 2nd largest viral content platform behind BuzzFeed.
120M monthly users · ₹40Cr revenue · 2.5B impressions
Nov 2018 — The Fall
Everything disappears overnight
Facebook changes its algorithm. WittyFeed's entire distribution — built over 4 years — vanishes in a single day. Revenue drops to zero. By February 2019, the team is out of money. The founders face months of depression and an impossible choice: give up or start over from nothing.
Nov 2019 — The Rebirth
The insight that changed everything
Looking back at WittyFeed's data, one thing stands out: the content that went most viral wasn't English — it was regional. Haryanvi, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri. 500M+ Indians hungry for entertainment in their own language, completely ignored by every platform. STAGE launches on November 1, 2019. Harsh Mani Tripathi — serial entrepreneur whose edtech startup was acquired by upGrad — joins as the 4th co-founder.
2023 — Validation
Shark Tank, Series A, and revenue inflection
STAGE appears on Shark Tank India Season 2. Peyush Bansal, Aman Gupta, and Namita Thapar invest. Blume Ventures leads a ₹40Cr Series A. The product-market fit is undeniable — users in Haryanvi and Rajasthani markets are paying and retaining at rates no one expected.
2025 — Today
₹111Cr revenue. 4.4M paying households. And just getting started.
Goodwater Capital and Blume co-lead a $12.5M Series B at $80M valuation. Revenue scales 6.2x in a single year. 5 markets live with proven unit economics. AI-native content pipeline ready to replicate into 14 languages. The team that was wiped out in 2018 has built something no one else in India can replicate.
$18.6M ARR · 5 markets · 14 planned
