POPxo, India’s digital community for women, has announced that it has raised Rs 20 crore ($3.1 million) in funding. The investment round was led by IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital with participation from GREE Ventures (Japan), Summit Media (Philippines), Atul Goel and Gurpreet Singh.

POPxo is a dynamic digital media platform attracting over 9 million loyal and engaged users every month. They largely access the platform on mobile devices across app and web. 80% of POPxo users are female (18-35), and over 70% of traffic comes from outside the top 5 cities. Since its launch in March 2014, POPxo has become the go-to fashion, beauty and lifestyle destination for women across the country. It runs India’s largest Influencer Network of bloggers as well as campus ambassadors across 200 campuses in India.

POPxo partners with leading consumer brands like Hindustan Unilever, Puma, Whisper, Tanishq, OPPO, L’Oreal, Reliance, Amazon and Jabong to amplify brand messaging to this key demographic through native advertising and large-scale influencer activations. Such partnerships have helped brands achieve high levels of target audience engagement, customer acquisition and transactions. POPxo has worked with over 175 brands.

POPxo Founder & CEO Priyanka Gill said, “It’s been a phenomenal journey. We've built a brand that millions of women love and engage with. Our platform allows them to connect with other women. It's a safe space where they can read, watch, shop and hangout. We focus on leveraging our large user base to generate transactions - beginning with affiliate ecommerce, across categories. This fundraise will help us deliver on the faith our audience, brand partners and investors have shown in POPxo.”

Vani Kola, Managing Director, Kalaari Capital said, “Young women in India are embracing the POPxo model that combines a digital community with content that empowers them. I am proud to see the progress made by the POPxo team as it has emerged as a leading company serving this market. Their new funding is a endorsement of the large opportunity to serve Indian women consumers.”

According to Karan Mohla, Partner - IDG Ventures India, "We are privileged to partner with a strong and international institutional investor base and an inspirational leader in Priyanka. Under her leadership, POPxo has become a dominant and enduring media brand and has created a platform for the largest and most engaged community of women in India."

Commenting on Summit Media’s foray into the Indian market, Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng, Founder of Summit Media said, “We believe that POPxo is fantastic company with a lot of momentum as seen in their accelerating audience growth across all platforms and social media. That, coupled with trends which point to advertising moving to digital media as well as explosive e-commerce growth in India, bodes well for the company. It is our first investment in India and we can see a lot of synergies going forward.”

"At a time when the whole world is asking questions about the treatment of women in the tech industry, we are proud to partner up with a company of women, by women, for women”, said Nikhil Kapur, Investment Manager at GREE Ventures. “While the digital consumer in India is truly interesting from a Japanese funds’ perspective, what really excites us about POPxo is the enormous, engaged female community that Priyanka and her team have managed to build with capital efficiency in a short span of time", he added.

Atul Goel, CEO & MD, E-City Ventures said, "We believe that Indian women need their voices to be heard on digital platforms and POPxo delivers that impactfully and at scale. The virtuous power of engagement is POPxo’s competitive advantage. We are very excited to be a part of POPxo."

Gurpreet Singh - Global VP, GWC added, “POPxo has managed to grow their user base to an impressive scale. The vision for POPxo is to become the one platform where Indian women not only consume content but also interact with their peers and shop - this is a story we have seen play out really well in China.”