‘Woovly focuses on audiences with branded products, user-generated content’
Woovly is a one-stop lifestyle shop that connects beauty, fashion and wellness brands to their customers via Ai-driven brand-tagged user-generated content. As per experts, the market research data confirms that the social commerce sector will grow to $100 billion from the current $1 billion by 2025in India. These numbers are on the top of the existing e-commerce which will aggravate to $200 billion opportunities by 2025. Therefore, Woovly, is attempting to support content creators and artists. Since July 2020, Woovly has seen a surge in the number of users, content and brands. There has been more than 200k brand-tagged user-generated content via 2.6 million users. Some of the globally renowned brands being Nike, ZARA, SUGAR Cosmetics, CROCS, among many such. All the tags generated by the users’ content is what makes them “SHOPPABLE”. Woovly has kickstarted its revenue with an annualized run rate of Rs 6 Crores. Along with the globally famous brands, Woovly has collaborated with more than 30 Direct-to-customer (D2C) brands. By March 2021, Woovly is looking forward to partner with at-least 500+ D2C brands, and help them generate leads and sales through its Ai-driven Brand-tagged user-generated content. To know on more about it, Vivek Singh Chauhan spoke to Neha Suyal, CTO & COO, Woovly. Here’s the edited excerpt of the interaction.
How social commerce apps with the help of AI have been redefining retail in the pandemic? In Pre-pandemic times, a shopper had the luxury of visiting a store, discovering and trying on what they liked and making a purchase. However, after the pandemic, things changed drastically and further limited one’s physical interactions in stores. Shoppers could no longer visit, discover, try and buy in one go. nonetheless, the concern was resolved as Artificial Intelligencestepped in and stepped up the game of Social Commerce applications. Technology has been contributing significantly to the sector of social commerce, especially in times like these and has been helping in hyper-personalisation. Hyper-personalisation can make more relevant recommendations to each user
based on their usage pattern. It also helps the user to discover upcoming brands and products, gain better knowledge on the product/brand by watching user experience review and recommendation videos and making a purchase, all at one place. on the Woovly app, there is an in-built AI model which helps in autorecognition of a product/brand, thereby improving the user-experience of discovery and purchase. Talk about the brand and its inception.
How the idea of reinventing the business came around? Woovly, back in 2017, started as a platform to aggregate people’s wishlists and convert them to sales leads to the last mile services in the adventure experiences space. but in 2020, when the pandemic hit, the travel sector was one of the worst-hit. Since travel was the focus of Woovly, we took a call to pivot. on studying user behaviour at large, we made a complete shift to Social Commerce. driven by AI brand tagged user-generated content, Woovly is today a social commerce platform to shop socially.
How is Woovly different from other social commerce platforms and how do you believe you stand out when there is so much competition in the industry? Currently, there are multiple social commerce platforms launched in India. While most of them are focused on tier 3 and tier 4 audiences with nonbranded products, Woovly is focused on tier 1 and tier 2 audiences with branded products and user-generated content which helps improve purchasing decisions. At Woovly, we are aggregating users and their branded product reviews and recommendations in the form of shoppable videos and images.
With e-commerce booming in the current scenario, do you think social commerce platforms can have the same impact on the minds of the customers? Please elaborate. While the e-commerce sector is fast growing from its current $120billion to $200 billion in the next 5 years, social commerce is likely to grow from its current $1 billion to $100 billion in the next 5 years. Though e-commerce has predominantly been around, there are a lot of glitches in the business funnel which has gradually shifted focus to social commerce. Instead of jumping across three different platforms to purchase as on e-commerce, people prefer discovering and making a purchase on the same platform as on Social Commerce.
How much funding have you received and how do you plan to invest these funds for expanding your business? In the seed round, we raised a funding amount of $2.5 million. Currently, we are in discussion with a few investors for our Series A funding. These funds are and will be invested in the product, user growth and on the team.
What would you like to comment on the rise of the social commerce sector after the Atmanirbharbharat Initiative? The Atmanirbhar bharat Initiative amongst others particularly brought self-reliance to local brands who moved online to connect with their buyers. They went further ahead in connecting with Indian built apps/ platforms to help them reach their target audiences and further increase their brand visibility. With brands becoming more varied in connecting with their users directly by building trust and providing customer satisfaction, social commerce works as the right fuel. With Key opinion Leaders endorsing brands they love among the social community, there are better brand awareness and trust which is built amongst the buyers. ■
vivek@mymobile.co.in