EloElo Group raises $80M in Series C led by Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal

EloElo Group, the consumer AI and entertainment company and parent firm of micro drama platform Story TV has raised $80 million in a Series C round of funding led by Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal.

This funding round also saw participation from MIT Investment Co. and existing investors Play Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Waterbridge Ventures, Griffin Gaming Partners & others.

The funding was done at a valuation of $500 million, which is almost a 5X jump from its previous funding in April 2025, sources indicated. The fundraise brings EloElo Group’s total capital raised to $130 million to date.

Bengaluru headquartered EloElo Group was founded in 2020 by former Flipkart executive Saurabh Pandey and it will use this latest capital raise to fund original content across local languages, launch its micro dramas internationally, and continue investments in Dolphin AI, its proprietary agentic platform.

In an interaction with YourStory, EloElo Group Founder & CEO Saurabh Pandey said, “This funding will expand on our vision and usher in a new era of sorts of mobile entertainment. This entertainment in the form of storytelling has never been solved for the mobile phone.”

Story TV has over 5,000 micro dramas in six languages, a new drama launched every three hours and 95 minutes of time spent per user every day The group also runs Master (micro learning), Dolphin AI (its agentic AI creative suite) and Voxy AI (an AI companion agent).

Also ReadEloelo's Saurabh Pandey bets that Dolphin AI can break the gatekeepers of Indian storytelling

Across its apps, EloElo Group has over 40 million monthly active users.

“Story TV shows us what India wants to watch, and Dolphin AI gives us the economics to make it, which is how we have scaled with solid unit economics. Consumer AI will change how content is created, distributed and consumed, and we intend to lead that shift from India,” Pandey remarked.

According to the founder, the strongest point of EloElo Group has been its ownership across all three layers of mobile entertainment: creating content, distributing content and imbibing AI into the whole process.

This fundraise also gives EloElo Group the ability to go deeper into various languages through a combination of live action shows, hybrid shows with AI, and pure AI shows. These will be original content.

On the investment, Manoj Thakur, Founder and Managing Partner of Hornbill Capital said, “EloElo Group combines strong creative capabilities with the ability to scale content through technology, which is something we deeply believe in. The team’s execution, financial discipline, and AI capabilities position it well for its next phase of growth.”

Micro dramas are among the fastest-growing formats in global entertainment. According to Omdia, the industry will generate $14 billion globally by the end of 2026. In India, Redseer estimates that 40 million people paid for a microdrama at least once in FY26, and Lumikai’s State of India Interactive Media Report projects the market will reach $4.5 billion by 2030.