Marketing and businesses go side-by-side. It is something that can make a business from nothing to everything.
Be it products, services, movies, or others, everything needs marketing to prosper. Many strategies are now available in the markets. For example- Email, ads, social media, co-branding, etc.
One of the most popular marketing strategies nowadays is Influencer marketing. It was not long ago when it was a budding concept. But now, this strategy has more power in it than one can think of.
This strategy seeks people having influencing personalities and takes advantage of it. Since it is now super lucrative, many agencies help businesses with this.
It is a strategy that takes advantage of the influence that certain individuals hold to meet business goals. This strategy can take place on the basis of payments and sometimes on the barter system.
An influencer is someone who produces content for platforms to gain an audience. With an increasing audience, they are able to develop a sense of trust among them. This gives them the capability to create a big impact on people’s buying decisions. They can help a business to target a wide audience that is beyond their target category.
The influencers involve three main types. These are celebrities, bloggers, and micro-influencers. Celebrity marketing has been in existence for a long. It is the rapid rise of the digital world that paved the way for bloggers and micro-influencers.
In this type of marketing, influencers get paid by businesses to showcase their brand. Since they have a close relationship with their followers, they are able to develop their trust in the brand. Hence, businesses get to reach a large audience with this strategy.
Benefits of Indulging Influencers in Marketing
Influencer marketing is the latest and the most popular trend for marketing currently. Here are some of its benefits:
The first advantage is that this helps a business to reach more audience. A brand may or may not have strong followers of its own. So, this strategy enables them to reach a wide audience towards them.
Another important benefit is the development of trust. People feel more related to the influencers of today. So, this helps a business to integrate trust among the audience.
This strategy has the ability to influence people’s decisions. Stronger the influence, the more they trust, and thus, more sales.
It is cost-effective. A business does not have to make any huge investment for this method of marketing.
It can help a business to increase its engagement. This can also enable a brand to become the talk of the town.
Today, we all can understand the value and importance of this marketing strategy. But putting this into practice can be a bit hard. There are times when brands are not able to find the perfect person for their business. It is likewise for the influencers. So, to solve this gap, many agencies are now present to act as a bridge.
Here are some of the agencies present in India:
Buzzerati
Buzzerati is a platform for influencer marketing, founded in the year 2016, by Samar Verma. It has a wide network of bloggers, celebrities, popular personalities, and more. This network spreads across all the social media platforms.
It collects and analyzes the data of top influencers, their followers, engagement rate, and more. This helps the brands to create appropriate messaging and find the best relatable influencer. This also enables them to create network campaigns.
Plixxo
One of the largest platforms in this field is Plixxo, founded in 2017 by Priyanka Gill. It is powered by the super popular name in the industry, POPxo. It acts as a bridge between brands and influencers.
This enables them to connect with each other and produce the desired content. To avail of its services, both can register themselves here.
They have top influencers on board like Kritika Khurana, Aashna Shroff, and more. Also, the platform has worked with top brands like Westside, Maybelline, etc.
Influencer
Influence.in is another agency, founded in 2015 by Suneil Chawla and Vikas Chawla. This platform has a huge base of influencers over various social media channels. With such a wide range, it becomes easier for a business to find the most appropriate person for their brand.
The catchy name, regular campaigning and, great services have made the platform a popular choice of many. They have worked with renowned brands like Nykaa, Himalaya, etc.
Grynow
This is another popular platform in India. It was founded in 2018 by Washib Khan. This provides the data about the influencers to the brands that help them save a lot of time in researching.
Here, the brands can make requests about their preference of content and channel. Then the interested influencers can send their proposals for the same. The platform helps with the entire process. It takes care of apt video creation, uploading and also tracks engagement and, sales.
Pulpkey
Another popular name in the list of agencies is Pulpkey, founded in 2017 by Amit Mondal. It is a great platform, where both brands and influencers can find each other and work together.
They help the brands to find an ideal creator for their marketing. They have worked with prominent brands like amazon, ZARA, Nestle, etc.
Eleve Media Pvt. Ltd.
It is a compelling agency that helps brands to make the most of their marketing through popular content creators or influencers. It was founded in the year 2012. The founders of the agency are Rohit Khanna and Prince Khanna.
The platforms help the brands with their campaigning strategies and also ensure top-notch engagement. Both brands and influencers can sign up on the platform to give and get the work. The agency has worked with big brands like BMW, hp, Cadbury, Adidas, etc.
Blogweet
It is an agency based in Delhi, founded in 2016 by Darshan Kumar and Satish Arya. It provides the brands’ access to many influencers over social media. The brands can find the ideal person for their promotions.
The agency has worked with popular brands like gaana, BlackBerrys, etc.
Conclusion
The rise in the demand for influencers gave birth to many agencies. These help the brands to connect with the ideal persons. The widening of the digital world during the pandemic helped budding creators develop into established influencers. They were able to create a big impact on people’s mindsets.
These people have earned a huge audience over their social media channels. This makes them a perfect medium for brand marketing. Thus, this marketing strategy has grown well, is growing, and continues to grow even more in the future.
Which are the leading agencies for Influencer Marketing in India?
Leading Agencies for influencer marketing in India are:
Buzzerati
Plixxo
Influencer
Grynow
Pulpkey
Eleve Media Pvt. Ltd.
Blogweet
What are the benefits of Influencers marketing?
Some of the benefits of influencer marketing are:
Increase brand awareness
Increases audience reach
Builds trust
Drives purchases decisions
Saves marketing time
How does influencer marketing works?
Influencer marketing uses influencers to promote a brand to a larger market. Influencers are public personalities with a huge fan following base. They help in increasing brand awareness to a large audience.
Are influencer marketing agencies worth it?
Influencer marketing agency helps in finding and managing your influencers. It saves the time associated in marketing. They are professionals to make proper strategies as per our business needs.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by POPxo.
POPxo is India’s largest online community for millennial women to read, watch, purchase, and hang out, which was founded in 2015. POPxo brings a welcoming and empowering environment that encourages women to live their best lives.
POPxo is aimed to merge content and commerce, which started as content and eventually had its own private label brand. POPxo’s articles, videos, and social networking material are in six languages – English, Hindi, Marathi, Bangla, Tamil, and Telugu – which has attracted over 39 million monthly users who spend over 3 million hours across all of the company’s platforms.
POPxo also partners with the leading companies to increase its reach and engage its audience. The whole platform runs on the basis of content that fascinates young girls. Furthermore, it also features on its website, Bollywood news, life hacks, retail listicles and more.
POPxo was acquired by MyGlamm’s parent, The Good Glamm Group on August 7, 2020. The six-year-old company’s investors – Chiratae Ventures, Kalaari Capital, and Neoplux Venture Capital have joined the board of MyGlamm soon after the acquisition. Furthermore, Priyanka Gill, the founder of POPxo also joined MyGlamm as a cofounder. Here’s all about POPxo, its Founders and Team, Business Model, Revenue Model, Services, Funding, FAQs, and more.
POPxo – Company Highlights
Startup Name
POPxo
Legal Name
Luxeva Limited
Headquarters
Gurgaon, Haryana
Sector
Beauty, Health & Lifestyle
Founded
March 2014
Founders
Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom
Parent Company
The Good Glamm Group
Operating Revenue
$1.61M in FY19
Funding
$12.4 mn (2021)
Number of Employees
251 to 500
Website
www.popxo.com
Popxo – Latest News
January 24, 2022 – Popxo parent, The Good Glamm Group acquires Organic Harvest, a beauty and personal care D2C startup led by Rahul Agarwal.
October 1, 2021 – Popxo enters the Indian cosmetic industry with a Makeup Collection from Myglamm.
POPxo has been founded in 2014 as India’s largest online community for women that offers discussions, content, and products across a wide range of domains including fashion, beauty, lifestyle, work, and more. Founded by Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom, PopXo offers millennial women an excellent platform where they can read, watch, shop, and hang out. Along with exclusive products across brands, PopXo also offers text and video content in a manner that is accessible via social media on mobile and PCs across the web. PopXo has last reported having crossed the 9 million mark in terms of user acquisitions every month and has boasted of witnessing over 102 million monthly engaged content views.
Popxo was acquired by MyGlamm in August 2020 and has since served as a subsidiary of MyGlamm, which eventually turned into The Good Glamm Group in September 2021. The Popxo parent, MyGlamm includes The Moms Co, St Botanica and Sirona, along with other content platforms – POPxo, Scoopwhoop, and BabyChakra, as per January 2022’s reports, and has already turned unicorn in November 2021, thereby being hailed as the first beauty commerce unicorn company of India.
Popxo – Industry
The Indian industry comprised of online personal care and beauty brands and products are estimated to reach $4.4 billion by 2025. There is also likely to be a 4X increase witnessed in the number of shoppers of beauty and personal care products online, which was last reported to be 25 million in FY20 and would be going up to 110 million in FY25.
Popxo – Startup Story
The Popxo is founded by two dynamic women – Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom. During 2012-13 there was no content platform at scale in English for women. So, this was the point when they thought of creating a useful platform for women and began Popxo in March 2013. Priyanka Gill first started Estylista in September 2013 in London for the NRI women, which is popularly known as the base of PopXo. For the first few years, the company started working out of London and raised its first institutional round of funding.
Initially, Popxo created content that enthused women who love to delve into fashion, beauty, lifestyle, wedding, relationships, work, fitness et cetera. The most popular things that attracted women to the Popxo website are hair and skin protection, and other products.
The greatness of the website lies in the production of 1500+ articles in six languages that the Popxo website was last recorded to be publishing every month. The team understood the audience well and presented articles in the same way, which lead to content creation to adding relevant videos. Today, the platform produces 60-70 videos a month and generates 100-150 million views a month. The duration of videos is between 3-7 minutes. Furthermore, they even produce web series.
Priyanka is the Co-Founder and President of MyGlamm and the Founder and CEO of POPxo and Plixxo. She lives in London with her husband and two children as a digital media entrepreneur and storyteller. She enjoys working with creative and entrepreneurial people, particularly women, and considers it a privilege to be in their company. She is now enrolled in a joint London Business School and Columbia Business School EMBA – Global program, said her Linkedin profile post dated May 24, 2021.
Her passion for writing merged with entrepreneurship when she started her own site, Estylista, which is now known as POPxo. She returned to India in 2014 to create POPxo, envisioning her company as a safe and engaging community that helps Indian women lead their lives. Influencer marketing seems to be on the verge of breaking out in India. As a result, she began developing a tech-enabled platform to take advantage of this enormous opportunity. Plixxo was released in 2017 and is powered by PopXo. It was here that India’s first generation of influencers grew up. Priyanka Gill has experience serving as a freelance writer and editor and an investor and board member for several companies. She eventually served as an advisor at PolkaRare and a seed investor of Kalamint, a role that she is still continuing with. She co-founded The Good Glamm Group on Darpan Sanghvi and Naiyya Saggi in September 2021 initially with the merger of MyGlamm, PopXo, and BabyChakra.
POPxo’s Plixxo also joined MyGlamm, India’s premier beauty conglomerate, in 2020, marking a watershed moment and a watershed year. Three powerful brands merged to form one incredible enterprise that goes by the name The Good Glamm, the parent company of MyGlamm in August 2020 and since then, Gill has been appointed as the Cofounder of the latter.
Namrata Bostrom was the co-founder of PopXo, who has also been the CEO of the company as well from the initial phase of the company and stepped down from the role in March 2017. Bostrom is an Economics student who has The University of Oxford and London Business School as her alma mater. Bostrom earlier served as a Consultant at The Boston Consulting Group, and as a Sales and Product Strategist at EDITED before co-founding PopXo. After leaving the role at PopXo, Namrata joined Facebook, the company that she is still aligned to as the Product Management Lead.
PopXo initially had a team of 15 people working together, which eventually grew to include more than 200 employees strong.
POPxo Founder and CEO – Priyanka Gill talks about POPxo
PopXo’s vision has always been “to build a content-community-commerce platform for women.”
The mission of the company was to help the users find their inner natural glow. Now, as a part of The Good Glamm Group, PopXo’s mission is aligned with the mission of its parent, which aims to build the global Digital FMCG Conglomerate of the Future.
Popxo – Name, Tagline and Logo
PopXo Logo
PopXo’s tagline has said, ‘Take it up a POP!’ – and we live and breathe it with everything we do.
Popxo – Business Model
Popxo targets millennial women aged between 18-35 with a range of products across diverse industries including fashion, beauty, lifestyle, wedding, wellness, and entertainment. The company has recently forayed into the cosmetics industry. The social community platform for women has entered the cosmetics industry, which is currently valued at $20 billion with a Makeup Collection by MyGlamm. MyGlamm has acquired Popxo towards the end of last year, and this development has come almost a year after that.
This new makeup collection is termed POPxo Makeup Collection by MyGlamm and will include nail kits, face kits, eye kits, and lip kits in order to cater to all makeup needs. The entire range is reported to be priced under Rs 499 per product in an effort to stay within the affordable limits for younger women. The Popxo Makeup Collection powered by MyGlamm will be sold on the MyGlaam app and website along with being available at popular company stores and kiosks across the country.
Popxo – Revenue Model
Sponsored content is the initial source of revenue. The company approaches brands and claim to have a large audience. Popxo knows what people want and can assist you in selling. The company made content for them, including social media and video content. That comes first while influencer marketing comes in second. Ads come in third, and e-commerce comes in fourth.
Popxo’s money comes from sponsored material, which accounts for half of our total. Influencer marketing accounts for 40% of income. They started selling online in the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year.
Fashion– POPxo allows you to stay up to speed on the latest fashion trends by reading fashion articles and watching videos. Thefashion experts of the company provide the users with everything they need to stay on-trend, from styling advice to shopping hotspots and must-have items. The platform also offers the latest news on fashion in both western and Indian. It also provides the best tips and fashion hacks that suit you. This platform also offers the latest updates on celebrity attires (both Bollywood and Hollywood).
Beauty– The team of beauty specialists is committed to providing the users with the best services available in the industry. The beauty section has it all, from unbiased product reviews to makeup hacks to skin and hair care advice. The users get updates on skincare, makeup, hair, bath & body, nails, hair products, beauty products and DIYs.
Lifestyle– POPxo also offers related content from a wide range of topics. It provides the consumers with popular articles across all categories, from travel and education to sex and relationships.
Wedding– Wedding planning can be as stressful as you imagine, which is why Popxo is also there to assist. The wedding area keeps young brides-to-be up to date on the latest trends. POPxo has all you need to know about weddings, from bridal makeup to honeymoon ideas.
Wellness– Overall wellness, according to POPxo, is at the heart of a healthy lifestyle. So, if the consumers want to live a healthier life, check out Popxo’s wellness section which has articles on managing stress and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Entertainment– Popxo will make sure the users get the best of everything from the comfort of their homes on laptops or mobile phones, from movie recommendations to what’s going on in the lives of their favorite celebrity.
Popxo is home to all feminine things. POPxo’s online store, which includes items such as home decor, beauty, clothes, face masks, mobile accessories, stationery, rakhi presents, and more, is an attempt to make online shopping for women in India more enjoyable!
POPxo has raised a total funding of $12.4M in over 7 rounds of funding. POPxo is funded by 21 investors. Neoplux, IDG Ventures, Summit Media, Oppo, Kalaari Capital, STRIVE, Chiratae Ventures are the lead investors of POPxo.
Date
Round
Amount
Lead Investors
Apr 25, 2018
Series C
$5M
Neoplux, Oppo
Mar 1, 2018
Series B
$750K
–
Mar 16, 2017
Series B
$3.3M
Chiratae Ventures, STRIVE
Nov 5, 2015
Series A
$2M
500 Startups, Chiratae Ventures, Kalaari Capital
Nov 1, 2014
Angel Round
$500K
—
Jul 1, 2013
Seed Round
$300K
—
Popxo – Growth
PopXo grew considerably with a well-knit team of 33 people in its textual content team. Let’s look at some of the prominent milestones that PopXo managed to attain throughout the years:
It has drawn over 39 million users per month
PopXo has delivered content in over 6 languages
The startup has seen over 10.18 mn visiting its content across the mobile app in a month
PopXo claims to have 1.6 bn monthly social media impressions
Popxo – Startup Challenges
Founded by Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom, ideating, founding, and growing PopXo was difficult for two independent women entrepreneurs, which both of them managed really well, earning themselves quite a name in the industry. The first challenge for PopXo was to expand the content it produced and the kind of content produced by the website. The challenge that followed was the creation of an app. Even here PopXo absolutely nailed it. The website witnessed an overwhelming 500K initial downloads!
Popxo – Competitors
Though Popxo, when it was launched, was the sole platform focused on confident and educated women, which speak to them directly without taking down to them, PopXo has been a lot of companies competing with it once it started achieving milestones. Some of the PopXo competitors can be noted as:
ScoopWhoop
Polka Cafe
BuzzFeed
The Business of Fashion
nippon.com
Luxe Radio
The Canberra Times
Popxo – Future Plans
Popxo forayed into the beauty segment with POPxo Makeup Collection by MyGlamm, where both MyGlamm and PopXo are a part of The Good Glamm Group in October 2021 and is currently targeting a revenue run rate of Rs 100 crore in the upcoming 12 months.
Popxo – FAQs
What is POPxo?
POPxo is an Indian online platform specially for women to read, watch, shop and hangout. POPxo covers content related to beauty, weddings, health and lifestyle.
Who started POPxo?
Priyanka Gill has founded POPxo in 2015.
Who is the owner of MyGlamm?
Darpan Sanghvi owns MyGlamm.
Does POPxo creates videos along with content?
Yes, POPxo is able to create over 2000 pieces of content along with 150 videos, 800 stories and a large number of social media graphics.
Pratyusha Srivastava
