Chennai teenagers secure USD 1 million seed funding for their NFT startup

Chennai based NFT startup Diginoor, founded by teenage entrepreneurs- Shaamil Karim and Yash Rathod, has secured USD 1 million seed funding from Contrary Capital, Polygon Fund, Kunal Shah, Sandeep Nailwal, Abdul Wahab Al-Halabi (MD at Embassy Capital) and others.

Founded in 2021, Diginoor aims to make NFT adoption mainstream in India with curated Indian entertainment content adapted for the web 3.0 space, according to a press release from the company.

Diginoor is leading the charge of carving out space for Indian cinema on the blockchain with the largest collection of Indian entertainment content.

Some of their partners include India's oldest and largest production houses like AVM Productions, Reliance Entertainment and a host of other major studios.


The company also was the first to introduce the option to buy NFTs using debit and credit cards, a first in the industry.
Co-founder of Diginoor, Shaamil Karim said, "We started Diginoor to sell NFTs of iconic Indian cinema content, right from Rajinikanth dialogues to metaverse Kabali suits.

“We plan on using these funds to hire a talented team across functions and tap into the plethora of content in the Indian media industry."


Co-founder of Diginoor, Yash Rathod commented, "We’re here to build the web 3.0 revolution, homegrown out of India, through cinema & gaming.

“We’re building exciting projects at Diginoor using NFTs and smart contract-powered decentralized gaming. It’s time we built cutting-edge tech out of India and compete on a global level."

To date, Diginoor has sold out its first NFT collection from the Rajinikanth starrer Sivaji. They recently launched NFTs from Chandramukhi and Kabali as well which included songs from legends like AR Rahman and metaverse versions of movie set props.


Diginoor also plans to start selling Bollywood NFTs along with exclusive music and celebrity NFTs, giving fans of cinema an opportunity to participate & collect exclusive content.

Both Shaamil and Yash graduated from Sishya School in 2021. Shaamil is a full-scholarship Computer Science student at an Ivy League institute - Dartmouth College and Yash is a Computer Science student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. They’re both currently on a break from university pursuing Diginoor full-time. – TWL Bureau