Gigato: A Mobile Application That Reimburses Consumers With Data For Data Spent on Browsing Partner Apps

Despite deep Smartphone penetration with devices and affordable devices, there is a solid demographic of consumers who are uncomfortable with paying for data and only connect to the net when they're in a Wi-Fi enabled area. Data is an expensive but essential commodity and Gigato was founded to address this solution.

Gigato, founded by Alfian Tan, Raina Kumra and Shailesh Nalawadi in 2015, is a flagship product of Mavin. It is an initiative to promote the idea of universal accessibility and mobile connectivity to people at all times. It is a mobile application that reimburses consumers with data for data spent on browsing partner apps. It is available on android prepaid Smartphone across telecom operators and regions in India.

"We are first and foremost about creating a healthy exchange of engagement with an app and data back to consumers," said Shailesh Nalawadi, Co-founder, Gigato.

Maaz Mohammad Interacts With Shailesh Nalawadi, Co-founder, Gigato And Spoke To Him

Genesis

My co-founders Raina Kumra, Alfian Tan and I believe in making the internet more accessible by making it more affordable. We saw an opportunity for a ‘win-win’ between app publishers and consumers and wanted to create the first data sponsorship platform. Even though we were working in Silicon Valley the genesis of Mavin began in our heartland, India. In all our travels to India we were hampered by having to get a SIM card and then constantly having data disappear on us after a little bit of usage. When we realized that this did not apply to just travelers, but to 95% of the Indian population, we thought we really need to solve this problem. As we dug into the problem, we also saw that this was a significant issue that was hampering the growth for startups in India relying on these users. This system had to be made better for all parties involved and that is what we set out to do. Make internet sponsored and available to all. This is how we began our journey with Gigato.

Challenges

For us, bringing on board the right partners and educating consumers on what we offer were the main challenges. We are a Silicon Valley-based company who created a product for a market we weren't positioned in. Additionally, we launched at a time when the Net Neutrality debate and Facebook's Internet.org was at its peak and there were questions regarding our role. Through targeted communication and key messaging, along with interactions with relevant persons both in the media and internet activists, we were able project Gigato as it is - an app that helps people connect to the internet without worrying about data costs. Being declared completely compliant and net neutral by TRAI and the Save the Internet group was the first major hurdle we had to cross.

Competition

We don't believe that there are direct competitors of Gigato. We have several indirect competitors but they specialize in incentivized downloads more than engagement.

Point of Difference

Gigato is a platform that benefits both consumers and app publishers. While publishers can reward for loyal behavior and engage with their customer base, consumers benefit by the numerous offerings for data reimbursement. We charge for every megabyte that we give out to users. However our model is not inherently different from cash-back models out there now. Our only difference is we give megabytes and we create engagement feedback loops.

Clientele

Here is a list of a few Apps that we have partnered with – Jabong, Truly Madly, Saavn, Voxer & Yepme. To begin with, we are just focused on India, which is the largest emerging market. Later we will be targeting other developing nations where internet is still a problem for consumers where we can solve and help consumers by giving them the data.

Traction

We’re expecting over a million registered users by end of quarter.

Funding Status & Monetization

We are seed funded to date and have nothing else to announce at this point regarding our next round of funding. We will reach out to you when we have new developments to report on this front.

Basically the model is: The app developers only pay for actual megabyte consumption and a setup fee or contract fee depending on our arrangement. We do not charge for appearing on our platform, only for actual engagement and usage. So for app publishers that want to test drive it = they can do so at no cost.

In effect, we are buying data packs from operators and it is exactly the same price that you would pay for a data pack so we don't even get any preference from them.