Cracking Social for Bharat

The consumer social space is one of the hardest models to crack. Often in VC inner circles it’s called “catching lightning in a bottle” because success in the space is rare and elusive.

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The consumer social space is one of the hardest models to crack. Often in VC inner circles it’s called “catching lightning in a bottle” because success in the space is rare and elusive. For every 1 company like Facebook, there’s often a graveyard of 1000 others that do not make it. Today, we decode Chingari - an Indian startup that has taken the world by storm. Not only was it recognised by stalwarts like the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi & Anand Mahindra, it is also one of the emerging success stories of cracking the Web 3.0 space with its GARI token. 

On June 29, 2020 - the world changed for the Chingari team overnight. There was a deep void created in the Indian market with the ban on Tiktok with the other Chinese apps, and it was up to players like Chingari to dive deep in and cater to the massive demand in the space. Since then, the market has been flooded with startups building the social layer for Bharat.

Market landscape

Currently, approximately 240 Million users are hooked on the short video apps in India. This number is expected to rise further in the coming years and reach 575 million by 2025. To put it in context, Facebook (now Meta) has roughly 340 Million users in India and Jio roughly 420 Million. While international players were scaling well in India there was a big gap in terms of social networks catering to the Bharat audience. My insights about this space were a function of my time at FB wherein we realized that FB’s growth in India was plateauing & that the Bharat audience didn’t find FB of relevance. To them, FB was a bundle of too many products & features with no clear USP - hence there was clearly a whitespace for apps to cater to the very diverse, multiple-language audience that came from Bharat (tier 2, 3, 4 towns across India).  

In the last few years, some of the leading players in the market ShareChat, Dailyhunt, MX Player, Glance have collectively raised about $1.5 billion and have 500 million+ app downloads since then. This space got heated with intense competition resulting in a consolidation drive witnessed in the sector with the recent acquisition of MX Takatak by ShareChat. 

Disrupting Web 2.0

Ads are how most powerful web 2.0 social networks made their monies. FB alone generates USD 115 Billion in ad revenues. Amidst all the existing platforms, Chingari has truly differentiated itself by driving a new wave of creator economy powered by Web 3.0 avoiding the ads-driven monetization route followed by its peers. 

Chingari has a 90+ million user base and has witnessed a two-fold growth in its user base in just the last year. Now in 2022, with the introduction of a Web 3.0 powered Chingari, it is set to become one of the trailblazers in this category (more on this later).

Firing up the Engine 

During its initial years, Chingari (they’ve been in the market since 2018) struggled to capture market share but around June 2020, with anti-China sentiment at a crescendo, the app saw a gradual uptick in user base. Within the next six days, it earned 2,500,000 users. They received extensive coverage from the media and leaders in India along with one single tweet from the Mahindra Group chairman, Anand Mahindra. That one tweet from him got Chingari 1+ million downloads in a single day. 

Engineering Virality 

“Working 48 hours at a stretch, sleeping for less than 2 hours a day, the team is literally putting their blood, sweat and tears to live up to the reputation that they have built. The app servers have crashed twice because of the massive user traffic and the team is trying hard to scale up their infrastructure to meet the rising demand from users,” Sumit Ghosh, Co-founder & CEO during the surge period. 

We all witnessed the popularity of the 'Made in India’ campaign video of the Indian innovator Sonam Wangchuk on YouTube. This video led Sumit Ghosh (one of the co-founders of Chingari) to start an Instagram campaign promoting Chingari as an Indian app. This video went viral and within 72 hours, Chingari got 500,000 downloads. Thus, sometimes virality can be engineered by tapping into the ‘hype’ and right positioning of your product.

Influencer & Product-led Growth 

The growth of Chingari took a new turn when they onboarded Salman Khan as their brand ambassador. They doubled down on their influencer base with actors like Salman, Sonakshi Sinha, Akshay Kumar and saw almost a 70-80% increase in the number of creators on the Chingari platform.

In addition to that, they also leveraged the power of vernacular to make their product more appealing to the Tier 2, 3 & 4 segments. The inclusion of 10+ local languages from India led to massive growth as there was a whitespace in terms of vernacular platforms. Talking to users in their own language helped unlock a new chapter of growth for Chingari. 

Reimagining Creator Economy 

Chingari didn’t settle for the traditional model of online ads for its monetization strategy, they set out on a journey to completely disrupt this space. The Web 2.0 space never rewarded creators on their platforms even though they were the pillars driving engagement for these social platforms. The idea of Web 3.0 is simply to create value for all involved & rewarding creators for building the early ecosystems. It also will enable community-led decision making rather than a few powerful organizations deciding the fate of the entire user-base.

Chingari, after recently launching its social token, GARI, made history by raising $4M in just 15 minutes. It plans to allow its users to utilize the GARI token to create non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and allow fans to fund their favourite creators. 

The platform will lead to decentralized protocol with the GARI tokens having government and voting rights. GARI's users will be able to put on-chain proposals, these proposals will be visible on the Chingari app, and GARI holders will be able to vote. The successfully voted proposals will be taken up by the DAO. If the proposals are about funding, the DAO will fund it, and if it is about implementation, they will implement it. Everything will be community-driven and the community will decide the future of GARI and Chingari.

While the success of the model is yet to be proven, the Chingari team has truly differentiated itself by pace and scale of execution. With a recent $15M Series A & the liquidity brought on by the launch of the GARI token, they’re well-positioned to become one of the first creator-led platforms in the social space to truly embrace the Web 3.0 model head-on and win in the space. 

Hope you enjoyed reading this piece - please do share it with your network, if you did. Going forward, I will keep sharing insights into how some of the most exciting startups are being built in India. I’m fortunate enough to have a front-row seat to the future being built out of India & would love to share it with you all. As always, if you have any feedback or comments - would love to hear from you. 

Keep seeking excellence. :)

Disclosure - I invested a small cheque in Chingari’s seed round.