In Roposo’s case the many millions numbered 21 (American dollars, of course) from very big names like Tiger Global, Bertelsmann and micro VC, India Quotient. It was actually India Quotient that got the investment ball rolling for the fashion social network now trying to add the social commerce factor to the business model. Then came Tiger Global who happens to be their largest investor to date, with Bertelsmann the most recent investor addition.
Binny Bansal was at one point an investor too and he was the one who introduced Roposo to Tiger Global. Tiger Global had sought the meeting with Roposo founders. But it still wasn’t money in the bank, they had to be first convinced that the fashion social network was commercially viable.
“These are very big investors with lots of experience in social network building. Tiger Global also was an investor in Facebook. “This is serious money. While there’s a risk involved in venture capital, it’s not just given away on hunches and ideas that merely seem good,” says Mayank Bhangadia one of the Three founder Musketeers which also includes Avinash Saxena and Kaushal Shubhank.
He is spearheading the second avatar of Roposo as it delves into monetization. In its first primary avatar Roposo was about building itself as a social fashion network by attracting users, and influencers like celebrities, popular brands, SMBs and fashion bloggers. Mayank feels Roposo is ready to launch into revenue generation as the social network comes full circle as Roposo users are now showing enough engagement with the platform to leverage it commercially.
“All this time we have been reiterating the Roposo platform, perfecting the algorithm that will make Roposo the relevant social fashion network for its users - be it an individual or an established brand. We feel Roposo is ready to begin monetizing.”
Monetization will happen through advertisements by brands, 15% to 20% commission on redirection to ecomm sites, for example you can find products Jabong, Flipkart on Roposo. Click a link and you will be redirected to the respective site to purchase product. They already have about With 550 webstores and 6,500 brands.
Influencer marketing include the partnership with TVF for a web series. In addition some of those big name brands and celebrities are seeking out Roposo on their own – you have Ritu Kumar the designer; actresses like Bipasha Basu and Sonakshi Sinha, and T-series promoting their latest two movies. None of their funds are spent on incentivising these celebrity influencers although they may be incentivised by a brand they represent. Roposo also spends zero dollars on user acquisition.
Further to making Roposo commercial, Mayank also sees continued community building as the key to unlocking monetization. Roposo already has an in-house set of bloggers, and content contributors, who drive traffic on the site.
Roposo counts 3 million downloads up to now. Going forward Mayank hopes to add 10 million active users by the end of 2017.
“Wait, what? How many active users do you have at present?”
“More than a million active users.” A safe assumption to make is it’s a number less than 2 million. So some number crunching tells us that’s a very, very ambitious growth curve. So given their active user number is anything from 1 to 2 million, Roposo will have to add start adding active users per month approximately 12.5 times faster than what they have been used to doing.
It is ambitious, Mayank agrees. “But look at any social network, that’s how they grow. And the returns on the investments on seemingly large amounts like five million dollars are exponentially higher. We have hit that sweet spot that all the social networks are trying to get to, from Facebook to Twitter. We have done something very few successful ones have managed to do. Flipkart tried a social network plus marketplace model called Flipkart Ping, but it wasn’t successful.”
It may be hard for anyone unfamiliar with social networking growth models to comprehend but that’s how social networks grow. It’s slow but show exponential growth curve after some time, analyst sources confirm.
“Social networking and brands are a good match for ecommerce. Social network sites lend themselves as effective promoters of businesses and brands. However the success of the match will depend on quality and freshness of the content. It will be key to attracting users and then converting them into customers.
Social commerce is a sustainable business model. It will yield constant revenue and the more targeted and niche the content of the social networking site is likely the chance of succeeding as a social commerce site. And social networks do start off slowly with attracting user base then show an exponential growth in user base. That is the natural trajectory” said, Raja Lahiri, partner at Grant Thornton India LLP.
We couldn’t however find an analyst or expert who has seen a social commerce site on board user number go from 1-2 million to 10 million in something like 12 months.
It’s still a tough call, we have no doubt that the tenacity will pay off to give results but whether they are the ones Mayank spells, we will have to wait and see.
Author note –
Tracxn helped verify some sets of data for this story
BW Reporters
Regina is a reporter for BW Businessworld. In her previous assignments, she has worked with Independent television Network as a news anchor and reporter in Sri Lanka
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