FrontRow, a Bangalore based online learning platform for creative arts, hobbies and sports has raised $3.2 million in seed funding from Elevation Capital (formerly SAIF Partners), Lightspeed Venture Partners and Deepika Padukone’s family office.

Founded in 2012, FrontRow allows users to learn creative arts such as comedy, music, sports etc from subject matter experts and renowned faces such as Neha Kakkar, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Suresh Raina, Yuzvendra Chahal and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

Courses are taught through prerecorded video lectures that users can watch at their convenience or download for further use. Additionally, FrontRow adds a

community aspect to its service where users can participate in activities, live events, challenges and competitions to hone their talent.

“If there’s one thing I wish I had access to while growing up, it would be a platform like FrontRow, one that gives individuals access to abundant knowledge in non-academic fields and connects them to a community of peers and professionals in their field of interest,” said Deepika Padukone.

The 20 member FrontRow team is led by experienced executives from the Indian tech landscape; Mikhil Raj led consumer product at ZestMoney, Shubhadit Sharma was VP Engineering at Glowroad with prioer experience with Oyo, Vahan & Finomena and Ishaan Preet Singh was an investor at Lightspeed and a consultant at McKinsey.

“We’ve known this team for years and are extremely excited to back a team building a new paradigm for learning – a cross between learning, entertainment, and community”, shared Akshay Bhushan, Partner at Lightspeed.

“Our past investments in the education, social and creator space such as Unacademy, Sharechat and CampK12 have made us extremely bullish on the opportunity to create large learning and community platforms in India. Once we spoke to FrontRow’s early users, we saw similar potential, and the need for a platform like this became very clear,” said Mayank Khanduja, Partner, Elevation Capital.