Launch HN: TagMango (YC W20) – Personalized video shoutouts in India
Why now: Celebrity culture in India has always been way different and more pompous as compared to other nations. People are fascinated by celebrities’ lives of glamour, infact celebrities are actually worshipped here. Like Rajnikanth, a south superstar, has over 30 temples to his name. Employees are literally given holiday on his movie release day. These celebrities are respectful of this culture and are always looking to give back to their fan base.
India has been leading in content consumption and creation on social media, platforms like Tik Tok are doubling MAU every year. The craze for content, the fan culture and the ease of digital payments make it an exciting opportunity for the indian audience to actually interact with their favourite celebrities that all of this while has been a dream for them.
About the team: Divyanshu is an influencer with over 200k followers and a keynote speaker. I'm a second time founder with a tech background having scaled my previous venture Fleapo to 3 countries. We have a strong team, having hired from the leading institutions of the country like the IIMs. We shifted the startup from Kolkata to Mumbai with the entire team prior to YC for better opportunities of growth at bootstrapped stage and scaled the startup from a home office in Mumbai.
TagMango started as an influencer marketplace where we worked with some of the biggest brands like Hershey’s, ITC, Meesho, etc and worked with 80K+ influencers. Although the marketplace was profitable, it was fundamentally dependent on other social media so we pivoted to a fan-influencer engagement based model which is completely independent and scalable. Our previous model has built substantial credibility in the influencer ecosystem that helped us onboard over 1200 celebrities within 3 weeks of our launch, generating over $25K in revenue.
We're eager to hear community's ideas, experiences and feedback, whether you're an Indian or coming from some other place entirely!