EloElo Group raises $80 Mn Series C from Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal for Story TV and Dolphin AI

Bengaluru based EloElo Group raised $80 million in a Series C round led by Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal, with MIT Investment Co. and existing backers Play Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Waterbridge Ventures and Griffin Gaming Partners also participating, Entrackr, Inc42, Mint and TechCrunch reported on 3 and 4 November 2026. Coverage puts the company valuation at about $500 million and total capital raised at about $130 million. Avendus Capital advised the company, Mint said.

EloElo operates Story TV, a microdrama platform with more than 5,000 titles across six languages, plus Master for micro learning, Dolphin AI as an agentic creative suite, and Voxy AI as a companion agent. Across its apps the group reports more than 40 million monthly active users and over 300 million installs. Story TV adds a new drama about every three hours and averages about 95 minutes of daily time spent per user, according to the company statements carried by those outlets.

Founder and CEO Saurabh Pandey, a former Flipkart executive who started the company in 2020, told Mint the money will deepen Tamil, Telugu and Hindi originals, take Story TV into international markets including the United States, and double down on Dolphin AI. More than 95 percent of the round is fresh capital, with only a small secondary for early angels, he said. Pandey also said AI has mainly cut VFX and location costs rather than replace actors, with production cost per drama around Rs 15 to 17 lakh.

The raise sits at the intersection of consumer entertainment and generative AI tooling. Dolphin AI began as an internal production helper and is being opened more widely for marketing and longer form generation. For India's digital economy desk, the signal is large media and entertainment capital backing an Indian stack that owns content, distribution and an AI production engine, not only a pure content app.