TVF has produced a series of iconic shows over the last few years, but that hasn’t reflected in its valuation.
Tiger Global, the US investment firm that backed the studio for a decade, has sold its stake in TVF at a valuation of roughly $22 million, or around Rs. 210 crore. That’s a steep drop from the $82 million valuation, or about Rs. 575 crore, that TVF commanded back in 2019.
The stake, reportedly up to 40%, has gone to a set of new investors including Lighthouse India Fund-I, Frontier Globecap Ventures and LC Nueva Advisors LLP. Neither TVF nor Lighthouse Canton commented on the transaction, and Tiger Global didn’t respond to queries either, according to a Mint report.
Tiger Global’s association with TVF goes back to 2016, when it put in about $10 million into TVF’s parent company, Contagious Online Media Network, valuing the startup at around Rs. 270 crore at the time. The investor continued backing the studio through 2019, by when TVF’s valuation had climbed to $82 million. That exit now closes out a ten-year relationship between the two.
TVF has built its reputation on shows that have become part of India’s pop culture vocabulary — Panchayat, Kota Factory, Aspirants and Gullak among them. What started off as a YouTube comedy channel alongside the likes of AIB and East India Comedy eventually grew into a full-fledged studio producing web series for streaming platforms, complete with its own app, TVF Play. Its early review as a scrappy YouTube-first outfit making India’s costliest web series feels like a different company altogether compared to what TVF has become today, with its shows now sitting comfortably on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix’s biggest franchises list.
But that creative success hasn’t translated into financial strength, at least not one that keeps pace with valuations investors were willing to pay in 2019. Part of the reason lies in how India’s streaming business itself has changed. Platforms spent years chasing subscribers and building out content libraries with little regard for returns. That era is largely over. Streaming services are now commissioning far more selectively, and are focused on unit economics rather than growth at any cost. Production houses like TVF, which built their business by licensing shows to these platforms, are having to work in a tighter, more competitive market for a shrinking pool of commissioning budgets.
TVF’s numbers reflect a mixed picture through this period. Revenue jumped from Rs. 34.3 crore in FY21 to Rs. 182.4 crore in FY25, according to Tracxn data, a five-year CAGR of 17%. Profitability has been choppier — net profit peaked at Rs. 68.3 crore in FY22 before sliding to Rs. 13 crore in FY25.
The ownership change also lands at a moment of internal transition for the studio. TVF recently made three senior appointments across its creative and corporate teams, even as Shreyansh Pandey, who has headed TVF Originals and worked on shows including Kota Factory, Aspirants, Gullak and Cubicles, is exiting after eleven years to start his own venture.
TVF last raised an equity round back in 2019, its Series D, with participation from Tiger Global, BlackSoil, StartX, Venture Highway and Naseba. It picked up venture debt from BlackSoil in 2021 but hasn’t closed a fresh equity round since.
The studio was founded in 2012 by Arunabh Kumar, and its journey from YouTube sketches to owning some of India’s most recognisable streaming franchises has been well documented. Its YouTube channel alone has crossed six million subscribers. Tiger Global’s exit at a quarter of TVF’s peak valuation is less a comment on the studio’s shows, and more a sign of how much investor appetite for India’s digital content businesses has cooled since the boom years — a shift that has hit several other once-highly-valued Indian startups over the past couple of years as well.