How This Startup Caters To Vernacular Audience A social media platform, carved to specifically cater to the Hindi speaking audience of today.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Today's world is witnessing an ever increasing internet penetration and rapid growth in the usage of social media and the trend seems to be going nothing but north in the days to come. Given the diversity in a country like India, this scenario becomes all the more interesting.
If we look at the figures, they indicates that there are over 66 crore Hindi speaking individuals in the country, of which merely 5 – 10 per cent are comfortable in communicating in English, reflecting that this vernacular market has a huge need gap that hasn't been answered till now.
Bridging the gap
With an objective to be the bridge that connects this audience and utilizes the bubbling potential in the vernacular market of India, ShabdaNagari was born in January, 2015. It is a startup which offers a social media platform, carved to specifically cater to the Hindi speaking audience of today.
A brainchild of 3 founders, Amitesh Misra, Nikhil Tiwari and Amaresh Chandra Misra, with varied core competencies, gives ShabdaNagari its entrepreneurial and executional edge over the others.
"ShabdaNagari is the platform on internet that offers social media services in Hindi. Competition in this space is scarce and still catching up. Startup has a number of benefits on ease of access and usability. Availability of 5 different input options for typing Hindi on the platform is the one of the biggest advantages on ShabdaNagari over others," said Amitesh Misra, Co-founder, ShabdaNagari.
Team says it all
Amitesh Misra is a 2007 IIT Bombay alumnus comes with a rich corporate experience of working with numerous multinational organizations prior to entering the entrepreneurial circuit. Nikhil Tiwari, a B-Tech in Information Technology, is one of the key cornerstones in the enterprise as his par excellence programming skills.
He helps the platform offer one of the best user experiences to the audience. Amaresh Chandra Misra, a lawyer with over 25 years of experience, offers the enterprise a completely different and vital support in terms of compliance and legal aspects.
ShabdaNagari, now has a strong team of 15 employees and has recently included 2 new promoters. This startup with a unique proposition is grabbing eyeballs at a lightning speed.
Funds Rolling In
Recently startup has raised an undisclosed amount of bridge funding from ah! Ventures. Through ah! Ventures the startup has been strongly backed by key investors like Yogesh Chaudhary from Jaipur Rugs, Anirudh Damani from Artha Energy Project and Abhimanyu Singh from TaskUs. The venture plans to utilize the funds mainly for its product development, marketing and promotional activities.
Giving an investor's perspective, Harshad Lahoti, Founder and CEO of ah! Ventures opined," India as a market is unique owing to its specific consumer needs. Products that wish to succeed need to be designed in order to cater to those specific needs. ShabdaNagari caught our attention and won investor trust because it had precisely carved a product that catered to those needs. The team's thorough understanding of the Hindi speaking market and their innovative solutions to the various requirements make them stand apart."
In addition to the ah! Angels like Yogesh Chaudhary, Anirudh Damani and Abhimanyu Singh, Shabda Nagari has also been backed by investors like Abhishek Singhania from the JK Group, Manoj Agrawal from Kanpur Plastipack and Rakesh Suri from Suri Shoes.
Narrating the story of fundraising, Misra said, "The proactive approach that Team ah! has taken to close this round in a timely manner was very effective. The team is very professional and it has the complete range of services on startup funding".
Growth Prospective
With more than 80 per cent of the traffic coming from India and around 10 per cent coming from USA, UAE and Canada, this platform is seeing a surge in the number of users on the domestic as well as on the international front.
In a short span of time ShabdaNagari has witnessed around 2 lakh unique hits and 8 lakh page views on the platform.
With internet usage on a continuous rise in tier II cities and villages of India, consumption of vernacular content shall inevitably be on the rise. ShabdaNagari is ready to be the forerunner in catering to this market and is in the process of making a few branding revamps to connect with the audience in a better and a simpler way.
