Brian Norgard has invested in Chingari, an Indian short-form video app that has seen its popularity grow exponentially after TikTok was blocked in the country and while the US government tries to implement a similar ban.
Tinder’s former Chief Product Officer contributed to the most recent funding round, which raised approximately $1.3 million. The app has also attracted attention from Fabrice Grinda, the founder of global online marketplace OLX.
Sumit Ghosh, the co-founder and CEO of Chingari, told The Economic Times: “We are humbled that globally acclaimed entrepreneurs like Brian Norgard and Fabrice Grinda loved the vision of the Chingari team and invested into what we are building.
“We are absolutely delighted to have them onboard the Chingari rocket ship and look forward to learning from them the art of building and scaling Global product companies.”
It’s reported that, in the two days after TikTok was banned in India, Chingari was experiencing hundreds of thousands of new users signing up every hour.
Norgard posted on Twitter last week that the “Indian startup ecosystem is inspiring to be involved with”. He left the Match Group-owned dating app at the end of 2018 and has previously invested in a number of prominent tech companies, including SpaceX, Lyft and NotionHQ.
Chingari’s main markets are Asia and the Middle East, but is now seeing increased traction in North America, Australia and New Zealand.
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