Instablogs the blog network which was showcased at last Proto.in has raised funding from Vishal Gondal who as most people might remember is the Founder and CEO of Indiagames 51% of which was acquired by UTV group last year. (Check out our WATShow with Vishal which we did last year) According to our sources the funding is within the range of 500-800k $ (approximately 2-3.5 crores) at a valuation of 7 million $ i.e. 30 crores approximately.
We had showcased Instablogs way back in 2006 and again reviewed them when they presented in Proto.in in jan earlier this year. Instablogs is founded by Ankit Maheshwari who is based in simla and whose team is distributed all over the country. Their overall traffic is also distributed with over 80% coming from an international audience.
Instablogs recently ventured into online video news with Global Report a daily online video show with news done by their citizen journalist all over the world. Which means that they are building content beyond text and hence the opportunity to monetize the same. Instablogs is still primarily monetized through google ads and there is no word on what could their possible monetization/business model would be.
This news is possibly the first one for a blog network or blog centric company to get funding in India. After the Paidcontent acquisition this news should hot up the blog/ugc market where standalone publishers or blog networks like Instablogs can hope for a better future if they do things right.
dude it opens up doors for us as well… hope other potential investors are reading about it