Artium Academy secures seed funding from Sonu Nigam & early-stage investors

Artium Academy, an online music learning and community platform has successfully completed its seed round of 750k USD led by Sonu Nigam and early stage investors like Jet Synthesis and Whiteboard capital. Artium Academy also has onboarded Swapnil Shinde, Snehal Shinde and Vivek Raicha as founder investors given their vast experience in technology, media and direct to consumers businesses.

Artium Academy aims to enable Indians across the globe to not just listen but also learn music through a structured performance driven curriculum designed by music maestros, taught 1:1 by certified teachers on a digital platform that provides learners with personalized dashboard, learning tools, learning graphs, virtual auditorium to perform live for audiences & practice studio. 

To lend depth and build a strong Music pedagogy, Artium has also introduced an Academic Board where Sonu Nigam will act as Patron-in-Chief and along with Mr. Anant Vaidyanathan, India’s leading voice expert & the academy’s Chief of Pedagogy, will be framing the academic policy and the accreditation process. Along with Sonu Nigam, Artium’s Academic board comprises music maestros like Shubha Mudgal (Hindustani Classical), Aruna Sairam (Carnatic Music), KS Chitra (South Indian popular film music), Louis Banks (Keyboard), Aneesh Pradhan (Percussions), Raju Singh (Guitar) and Gino Banks (Drums) acting as Faculty Heads, driving the curriculum for their respective genres. At regular intervals, these music maestros will be inducting the teachers and holding live masterclasses for learners.

Founded by Ashish Joshi and Nithya Sudhir, Artium Academy since launch, has grown its learner base by eight fold and month on month revenue by 30%. The company is adding more courses and genres, expanding into international markets, and scaling its proprietary technology. 

Ashish Joshi, the Founder and CEO of Artium Academy previously led Mezi’s India operations which later got sold to American Express. Before that Ashish held Senior positions at CA Media and Universal Music and Hungama digital media. With Artium Academy, Ashish Joshi says, “The centuries old, venerated music training methods of India are ready to meet the technological opportunities of the new age to create a never before learning experience for the music aspirant of today. Artium aspires to be thought leader in technological research and innovation to enhance the power of self assessment, to capture vast data from fine human judgement and feed machine learning towards creation of AI supported systems of assessment and prescription, and the sheer experience of the learning session, and facilitating the reach of qualitative pedagogy to the deserving across the globe.”

Sonu Nigam, Patron In Chief and one of the investors of Artium Academy says, “Musical expertise is a product of multiple inputs from a variety of sources, experiences, influences, inspirations, challenges, struggles, failures and victories. My colleagues and I feel privileged to bring our learning, knowledge,  skill development methods and insights within the reach of multitudes of students  through our design of performance based learning programmes that are committed to bring out the best in each individual.’’

Artium Academy courses can be personalised to suit individual needs. Students can benefit from the easy dashboard with access to previous classes, projects, assessments, and notes by Artium trained and certified educators. Learners from across the world are also privy to exclusive Masterclass sessions from industry experts.

Rajan Navani, Vice Chairman and CEO of digital entertainment conglomerate, Jetsynthsys Technologies, the lead investors in this round, says “Music learning is in line for major disruption. Like it did for music creation, distribution and monetization, technology coupled with growing aspiration of Indians for extra-curricular activities will expand the music learning market multi-fold creating a massive opportunity for the Artium leadership team who have vast experience in building technology and D2C businesses.”