Mandira Bedi Forays in the Startup World, Invests in Social Commerce Platform Sagoon

Bollywood actress Mandira Bedi forays in the startup world by investing in Sagoon, the social commerce platform enabling its users to Connect, Share, and Earn. With this investment, Sagoon also opens avenues for common people as well as institutional investors to participate in its fundraising campaign globally. Mandira Bedi’s investment will further enhance company’s growth and presence in India.

After three successful rounds, Sagoon has so far raised $4.8 from 3000+ investors all over the world. The app has received more than 1 million app downloads in just two months after the launch. Sagoon now boasts over 2.3 million users across its mobile and web-based social commerce platform. 

The company plans to further raise $5 million that it will use to hire more data scientists, strengthen infrastructure, enhance technology and promotion for user growth.

Commenting on the occasion, Govinda Giri, Founder and CEO, Sagoon, said, “We are extremely delighted to have Mandira Bedi on board. With this investment she becomes a Sagoon co-owner along with 3000+ investors from the globe. The success of our funding rounds is a strong indication of the trust investors have in our vision, our technology-thinking of services as well as our strong focus on robust model. We have managed to successfully stand out in the social commerce space as an innovator par excellence.”

Expressing her views on the investment, Mandira Bedi adds, “I am proud to associate with Sagoon and strongly believe in their vision to connect the world. I resonate with Sagoon’s vision to reverse the negatives of social media by creating a new meaning of social sharing. Moreover, digital is the future of India across all fields and going by the Digital India vision, I decided to invest in Sagoon since they’re at the forefront of innovative cutting edge technology and have great founders to realize their vision.”

The app has three important features – My Day, Secret, and Mood Talk. My Day lets you plan your daily activities, set reminders, keep track of your schedules, and also share events with friends. Secret is a section within the app that lets you have private conversations with messages that disappear, share thoughts with others without disclosing identity, and also explore what others are talking about from the community. Lastly, Mood Talk is a chat feature that lets you communicate with others using ‘moods’ – which basically refers to real-time animated characters reflecting your current state of mind. The chat vanishes automatically after 24 hours, a feature similar to Snapchat and Instagram where you can post content that disappears after a given time period.

Direct commerce between users and sellers and amongst users is prohibited, and users earn no financial rewards for being a direct source of revenue. There is also a missed opportunity to make gift cards, coupon offers, and discounts purely social.

Sagoon will continue the development of its innovative Social Smart Card, planned for release by the end of 2018, and allowing Sagoon users to earn money while shopping, redeeming coupons, and gifting their loved ones. Further, Sagoon is rigorously working towards developing and launching an iOS app. The company considers the social smart card and the iOS app to be game-changers, particularly within the $300 billion social ecommerce market.

In March, Sagoon also entered into agreement for a $5 million investment from HT Overseas Pte Ltd (“HT Singapore”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of HT Media Limited (“HT Media”). 

Not only Mandira Bedi, recently Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput in partnership with serial entrepreneur Varun Mathur, made his entrepreneurial debut with the launch of Innsaei Ventures Pvt. Ltd. The new venture aims to bring significant socio-economic and developmental transformations through creation and massification of intellectual property powered by emerging technologies.