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<keyword id="3706" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Kunal-Kapoor">Kunal Kapoor</keyword> is a famous <keyword id="143" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Bollywood">Bollywood</keyword> personality known for his work in Cinema but few know of his brilliant work in the ubiquitous crowd funding- for- causes platform, <keyword id="2953722" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ketto">Ketto</keyword>. 
 
Ketto is an online fundraising website to raise funds for social(NGOs/Non-Profits/Charities), creative(Movies/Music/Theatre/Fashion/Technology) and personal(Health/Education/Travel) causes from a large number of people who share your passion or concern. 
 Ketto, founded in 2012 by Varun Sheth, Zaheer Adenwala and <keyword id="2010" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kunal">Kunal</keyword> Kapoor, is engaged in the business of crowd-funding, which requires raising small sums of money from large numbers of people to achieve a common goal. 
 <keyword id="824043" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Business-Insider">Business Insider</keyword> caught up with the charming actor in <keyword id="6354321" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Bengaluru">Bengaluru</keyword> where he was launching the ‘MCBC’ campaign (Men Countering <keyword id="16070" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="breast-cancer">Breast Cancer</keyword>) is spearheaded by men to generate awareness and conversations around breast <keyword id="6355291" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Cancer">cancer</keyword> and most importantly to encourage women to get checked early. As a part of the campaign, Ketto and JUMPINGGOOSE® have launched a range of branded T shirts for men exclusively available on <keyword id="2734916" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amazon-Fashion">Amazon Fashion</keyword>. 
 
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/EXCLUSIVE-BigBaskets-co-founder-talks-about-hyperlocal-businesses-and-profitability/articleshow/55752379.cms">ALSO READ: EXCLUSIVE: BigBasket’s co-founder talks about hyperlocal businesses and profitability</a> 
 
Here are the excerpts: 
 
Q. What is the kind of work Ketto is doing? 
 
Kunal: At Ketto, we believe that a change in mindset is the first step towards solving a problem. Over the past 4.5 years, we have raised over 40 crores for different causes. People are catching up with the idea of crowd funding. Ketto is a reward based platform where if you support a tech company, you get the product as reward and if its a social cause then usually your reward is just the gratification of helping someone out and so on. There is no equity or stake. 
 
Q. How does crowdfunding help start-ups? 
 
Kunal: Crowd funding is great for start-ups. It is basically <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Unlike-Paytm-Vodafones-M-Pesa-is-allowing-you-to-withdraw-cash-using-your-e-wallet/articleshow/55718110.cms">democratisation of capital in a world </a>where very few people control the money. When someone has a great idea, they can ask people to validate it by contributing whatever they can. On Ketto, a bunch of start-ups have raised money and also gone ahead and raised money from VCs and investors because crowd funding is a validation of the fact that their product was viable. 
 
Q3. From acting to running a business; why did you chose to start Ketto? 
​ 
Kunal: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/This-LinkedIn-survey-reveals-that-India-has-the-highest-level-of-sales-and-marketing-collaborations/articleshow/55749887.cms">I’ve always wanted to run a business which was ethical </a>which not only made profits but also gave back to the society. I found crowd funding fascinating while I was working in the social space with NGOs, I found the cost of raising money for causes was very high, going upto 401-50% which I thought was very unfair.The maximum amount of money should go to the cause.

EXCLUSIVE - Bollywood actor Kunal Kapoor talks about Ketto, his crowdfunding startup which has raised Rs 40 Cr for social causes

Imagine, you are on a long road journey and in a dire need to answer nature’s call, but don’t know where the next closest ‘public’ loo is? Or you are travelling with children and stuck in a traffic jam for hours, and you hear the dreaded, “Are we there yet?”, but unable to locate a restroom nearby. Well, these experiences can be extremely unpleasant. But now you needn’t worry anymore, as a new app <keyword id="2779915" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="GottaGo">GottaGo</keyword> is your new <keyword id="2779916" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="toilet-seeking-superhero">toilet-seeking superhero</keyword>! 
 Brainchild of entrepreneur and tech whiz <keyword id="2458788" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kunal-Sheth">Kunal Sheth</keyword>, GottaGo is a free app that helps you locate nearby public restrooms with just the tap of a button on your smartphone screen. The minute you press the button, restrooms are displayed on a map with the distance from your location along with the directions of how you can reach the place. 
 
This innovative idea struck the founders when they analysed that with the increasing hours spent commuting, being stuck in traffic jams and a lack of clean public infrastructure, travellers often find themselves getting stressed searching for a restroom nearby. 
 
“We started a website that listed information of restrooms, area-wise on a website called p911.in back in 2010. With the smartphone medium, the experience got better with detecting the location of the user using GPS and then directing the user through navigation that they are already familiar with”, said Kunal Sheth. 
 
When Kunal created the first version of the app and circulated it among friends, he got great feedback. Especially women, with young children, found locating a clean and hygienic restroom at their fingertips a huge boon. 
 
Kunal further added, “With the growing risk of infectious diseases such as urinary tract infection or other infections, we wanted to only list the cleanest options available.” 
 
And with the help of a few evangelists in every city GottaGo came out with a list of cleanest restrooms available in the areas. Currently, GottaGo lists over 10,000 restrooms mapped across malls, hotels, hospitals, restaurants, railway stations, museums etc. 
 
Currently, the app is available on the Google Play Store and will soon be available on the Apple App Store. This service can be used buy the app users in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Chennai. And over the time, GottaGo is also planning to expand this to other cities as well 
So before your embark on your next trip, make sure you download this app first.

New app GottaGo will help you answer nature’s call stress free!

<ul><li>Tejashwi Yadav clocked over 1.24 million engagements in October overshadowing incumbent Bihar CM Nitish Kumar who managed only 133,879 engagements. </li><li>The IPL was the flavour of the season for cricketers where expectedly India captain and expectant father Virat Kohli topped Twitter engagement with 2.4 million engagements. </li></ul>Twitteet, a social media analytics firm released its October analytics report today. This is the first time social media analytics for Twitter engagement by 20 categories have been done on a daily and monthly basis. The categories whose Twitter engagement have been analysed include Politicians (party-wise), Journalists, Business Leaders Founders &amp; Investors), Sportspersons (cricket and other sports), Movies stars (Bollywood and regional), Authors, Chefs, and Comedians. Here are the winners from some key categories: <ol><li>Politicians – Narendra Modi - 72,15,913 Twitter Engagements</li><li>Bollywood – Sonu Sood - 24,36,601 Twitter Engagements</li><li>Business Head – Anand Mahindra - 4,08,882 Twitter Engagements</li><li>Cricketer – Virat Kohli - 24,65,918 Twitter Engagements</li><li>Sports Star (non-cricket) – Vijender Singh - 4,27,006 Twitter Engagements</li><li>TV Star – Sidharth Shukla - 3,90,901 Twitter Engagements</li><li>Journalist – Deepak Chaurasia - 18,88,720 Twitter Engagements</li><li>Founders – Kunal Shah - 60,093 Twitter Engagements</li><li>Comedians – Kunal Kamra - 11,46,111 Twitter Engagements</li><li>Regional Cinema Star – Mahesh Babu - 7,32,964 Twitter Engagements</li><li>Authors – Anand Ranganathan - 5,36,874 Twitter Engagements</li><li>Investor – Mohandas Pai - 99,741 Twitter Engagements</li></ol>Key highlights of the first report include the remarkable rise of Tejashwi Yadav who clocked over a 1.24 million engagements in October overshadowing incumbent Bihar CM Nitish Kumar who managed only 133,879 engagements. Expectedly, Prime Minster Narendra Modi topped the overall Indian Twitter engagement rankings with over 7.2 million engagements. Among Indian Politicians Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is at #2 with 3.5 million engagements, UP CM Yogi Adityanath and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were 3rd and 4th in the Indian Politicians engagement rankings. Surprising inclusions in the top 10 among politicians were BJP Spokesperson Sambit Patra at #8 who clocked a 1.1 million engagements; Dr Kumar Vishwas at #5 who got 1.2 million engagements. Sonu Sood’s humanitarian work during the pandemic saw huge resonance on Twitter where even at a Twitter following of a tenth of super star Shah Rukh Khan (Sonu Sood’s 4.6 million followers to SRK’s 41.3 million followers) he topped Twitter engagement among Bollywood Stars with a phenomenal 2.4 million engagements. The Bollywood Badshah Shah Rukh Khan was at #2 with 7.3 lakh engagements. Akshay Kumar with 6.72 lakh engagements was at #3, and Anupam Kher with 4.74 lakh engagements was at #4. Former Maharashtra CM, the late Vilasrao Deshmukh’s actor-son Riteish Deshmukh was at #5 with 4.2 lakh engagements. Pooja Hegde was the surprise entrant into the top 10 with 2.51 lakh engagements. In the Business Leaders category, Anand Mahindra towers over others with over 4 lakh engagements. RPG Group’s Chief Harsh Goenka is at #2 with 2.2 lakh engagements. Chinese mobile phone brands India CEO’s Manu Kumar Jain of XiaoMi and RealMe’s Madhav Sheth are at #3 and #4 respectively with 1.5 lakh and 1.1 lakh engagements respectively. Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji with 49K engagements is at #5, Biocon’s Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw with 41K engagements at #6, Marico’s Harsh Mariwala with 24K engagements is at #7, Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma with 19K engagements at #8 and Chairman of JSPL and former MP, Naveen Jindal with 16K engagements is at #9. Google’s Global CEO Sundar Pichai with 15K engagements is at #10. The IPL was the flavour of the season for cricketers where expectedly India captain and expectant father Virat Kohli topped Twitter engagement with 2.4 million engagements. Suresh Raina was at #2 with 1.9 million engagements. Former stars Sachin Tendulkar at #3, Harbhajan Singh at #5, and Virendra Sehwag at #6, actively engage with fans and followers on Twitter with 1.5 million; 6.8 lakh and 6.3 lakh engagements. Aakash Chopra, now a commentator is also hugely popular and ranks #4 with over 9.65 lakh engagements on Twitter in October. Perennial favourite Mahendra Singh Dhoni was completely inactive on Twitter in October despite more than 8.1 million followers. Among Indian sports persons, outside of cricket, Olympic medallist and pro-boxer Vijendra Singh tops with 4.27 lakh engagements. Perhaps the India’s best kept secret in sports is veteran pistol shooter, coach and sports enthusiast 88-year old Dadi Chandro Tomar, better known as ‘Shooter Dadi’ from Baghpat, UP. Since learning to shoot when she was well into her sixties she has attained national fame as an accomplished shooter having won more than 30 national championships. She was at #2 in the non-cricket sports category with a phenomenal 2.84 lakh engagements leaving superstars like Saina Nehwal, Babita Phogat and Jwala Gutta behind! In the intensively competitive Journalists category, News Nation’s Deepak Chaurasia topped Twitter engagement with a whopping 1.88 million engagements. Aaj Tak’s Rohit Sardana was at #2 with 1.1 million engagement followed by Sushant Sinha with 1.05 million engagements. Veteran journalist and India Today’s Consulting Editor Rajdeep Sardesai was at # 8 wit6 6.6 lakh engagements and Rana Ayyub was at #6 with 7.6 lakh engagements. In other categories, Comedians and Start-up founders made their mark. Among comedians, Kunal Kamra topped impressively with 1.1 million engagements, followed by Ashish Chanchlani at #2 with 4.92 lakh engagements, Vir Das at #3 with 3.2 lakh engagements, Atul Khatri at #4 with 2.21 lakh engagements and Amit Bhadana with 1.1 lakh engagements at #5. Cred Founder Kunal Shah lead the Business Founders category with 60K engagements and Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma was next with 23K engagements. Said Twitteet co-founder Sandeep Amar: “Our core objective is to provide social business intelligence, social monitoring and actionable insights to the leaders across various domains and also to businesses and marketers. We run daily analysis of all engagements – which are the total of likes and retweets, collate these every month, across categories; and then slice and dice them to mine actionable insights. At some level a leaders Twitter engagement gives one sense of his connect with his constituents and what are the key issues that matter. We hope to sharpen this data over time and broad base our offerings to other social platforms and geographies.”

Narendra Modi, Sonu Sood and Anand Mahindra top Indian Twitter engagement in October 2020, shows report

<ul><li>Over the last few years, <keyword id="2540701" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Influencer-marketing">influencer marketing</keyword> has grown exponentially in India.</li><li>The Advertising Council of India has now launched <keyword id="6586390" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="new-guidelines">new guidelines</keyword> for the <keyword id="11333696" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="influencer-marketing-industry">influencer marketing industry</keyword> to increase transparency.</li><li>We reached out to experts from the influencer marketing ecosystem to understand how it would impact the industry and help shape its growth in the coming years.</li></ul>The Advertising Council of India (ASCI) has launched new guidelines for influencers, brands and talent agencies in a bid to make influencer marketing more transparent for consumers. The lines between influencer’s personal content and paid content have become blurry, almost indistinguishable from regular posts. As per the guidelines, all advertisements published by social media influencers or their representatives, on such influencers’ accounts will be expected to carry a disclosure label that clearly identifies it as an advertisement. Disclosure is required if there is anything of value given to mention or talk about the advertiser’s product or service and it is supposed to be placed in a manner that is hard to miss. Influencer marketing has been witnessing an exponential growth in India in the past few years. According to digital marketing agency AdLift, India's influencer market is estimated at $75-150 million a year, as compared to the global market of $1.75 billion. And the year 2020 pushed businesses of various kinds and sizes to further experiment with digital solutions as all activities from attending concerts and birthday parties to fitness sessions moved from the physical realm to digital. Today, Indian audiences are watching more online videos than ever before. Nielsen studies show that home-bound consumers have led to a 60% increase in the amount of video content watched globally. So, as more and more Indians get connected to the internet, they discover and interact with a multitude of brands on a daily basis. ASCI’s new guidelines, experts said, will help give a structure to the industry, will elevate the level of trust between customers, influencers and brands. We reached out to experts from the influencer ecosystem to understand the implications of the guidelines and how it will impact stakeholders, and here is what they had to say: <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Varun Mayya- Digital Content Creator and CEO &amp; Founder of Avalon Meta and Scenes by Avalon:" text="Varun Mayya- Digital Content Creator and CEO &amp; Founder of Avalon Meta and Scenes by Avalon:">Varun Mayya- Digital Content Creator and CEO &amp; Founder of Avalon Meta and Scenes by Avalon: </cmsannotation> The reach of influencers and media is much wider than ever before and thats one of the reason why the digital economy has disrupted the traditional economy. The consumers' mindset has changed massively over the last few years and they're much more sophisticated now. This change calls for changes in the advertisers approach with regards to ethics and openness. Influencers should be mindful of the products and companies they advertise and be upfront about the fact that they're paid to promote them. When you see TV, you know Shah Rukh is paid to do the ad but on Social Media this is mostly absent. You're following a person because you find them genuine and helpful but all of a sudden when they're promoting some fitness or haircare product and you don't know whether it's genuine or not. These guidelines should be able to bridge that gap and I hope that advertisers also take this as seriously as the creators." <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Viraj Sheth- Co-Founder and CEO at Monk Entertainment:" text="Viraj Sheth- Co-Founder and CEO at Monk Entertainment:">Viraj Sheth- Co-Founder and CEO at Monk Entertainment:</cmsannotation> I believe the ASCI Influencer Guidelines are a welcome move within the industry. The influencer marketing industry definitely was in need of regulation considering how size-able it has become and will keep getting in the near future. Influencers and creators have the onus of ensuring complete disclosure with regards to all their endorsements and brand deals in order to make sure their audiences know of the paid partnerships and they can then evaluate their decision about whether or not they wish to still buy the product/service. The introduction of these guidelines is only half the battle won, the latter half would have to focus on correct implementation and enforcement of the same with both brands and creators. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Kunal Kishore Sinha, Co-founder and COO, ClanConnect:" text="Kunal Kishore Sinha, Co-founder and COO, ClanConnect:">Kunal Kishore Sinha, Co-founder and COO, ClanConnect:</cmsannotation> Influencer marketing has been witnessing a steady growth in India in the past few years. As digital media consumption is growing, the distinction between content and promotional advertisements is becoming important. Influencer marketing has now become mainstream. Therefore, consumers have a right to know what content has been paid for by brands and the guidelines intend to bring this transparency to influencer marketing. The guidelines are crucial at this moment considering the rapid growth in branded communications to consumers via social media. Wherein there are guidelines for traditional media advertising, now, with the boom in influencer marketing, these guidelines have become essential. The guidelines seems to have addressed all the necessary angles. These have been finalized after extensive evaluation and consideration of suggestions by industry players. With these guidelines, consumers can expect much more transparency as they navigate through the social media universe. These will not only streamline the space and offer a direction but also ensure that there is an added sense of social responsibility amongst the influencer community. On our part, we are geared up to guide influencers through the intricacies of the newly-launched guidelines, helping them meet all the requirements so they can focus on what they do best – create impactful content. We trust this will regulate &amp; filter out the misleading content, creating a transparent and healthy digital world! These guidelines will align the Indian online advertising industry with international markets. If influencers want to be followed by their audience, it is necessary for them to stay interesting, honest, creative while managing the art of storytelling to keep consumers engaged. While these new guidelines will promote transparency, it will also elevate the level of trust between customers, influencers and brands. So it will be beneficial across the stakeholders in the ecosystem. These guidelines will help the consumers to identify promotional content and also guide digital influencers. Ultimately, it will unlock a wealth of new opportunities for the fast-evolving segment that will result in positive outcomes for the sector in the long run. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Neel Gogia, Co-Founder, IPLIX Media:" text="Neel Gogia, Co-Founder, IPLIX Media:">Neel Gogia, Co-Founder, IPLIX Media: </cmsannotation> The <keyword id="10323570" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="asci-guidelines">ASCI guidelines</keyword> are a welcome step forward in introducing transparency and authenticity across the ecosystem. However, every new initiative will face questions on its practicality. That debate is necessary to create a sustainable solution. Hence, in my opinion, the current recommendations might not be applicable to every influencer or every tool of influencer marketing. The lines are a little blurred. For instance, a non-monetary association under which an influencer shares an unbiased product review will be labeled as an AD, leaving consumers in a tough spot. This will be difficult to implement for a tech or an auto influencer as they cannot buy every product for review as they are of high monetary value, and in fact, not all the reviews are positive as well so they cannot be labeled as an AD. Furthermore, organic and value-added content creation with genuine product integration is being given priority by the brands, agencies as well as influencers at the moment and the current recommendations might not be aligned with this objective. For a YouTube content creator with long-format vlogs labeling the entire integration section as an AD will lead the audience to ignore the content even if it is adding value to them. A mention of 5-10 seconds should suffice rather than a full-length mention. I believe platform labels like ‘Includes paid promotion’ and ‘Paid partnership with’ on YouTube and Instagram respectively, offer that clarity for sponsored posts. This is sufficient to highlight that the integration is paid. However, additionally, the creators can put a supplementary hashtag to make it more visible. So, we will have to wait and watch how this unfolds.” <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Rajni Daswani, Director, SoCheers:" text="Rajni Daswani, Director, SoCheers:">Rajni Daswani, Director, SoCheers:</cmsannotation> The guidelines are a good guardrail in the industry that has been unregulated so far. The fact that the guidelines are not extremely stringent and do rely on influencers to see that they do justice, leaves room for brands to explore ways to circumvent around it. A lot will depend on how influencers &amp; brands adapt to it. Many brands are averse to the whole #Ad &amp; #Sponsored and may now start drawing parallel compares to paid media, which might see the investment in influencer marketing take a slight hit, after the phenomenal growth year that it has had. These guidelines will be like a double-edged sword for creators as well. While they will get a lot more say in putting out content that will work on their pages, influencers/creators who are doing a lot of branded content might see a hit in their engagement &amp; reach numbers. Quality content will continue to win nonetheless. For brands, would suggest to give influencers a little more freedom in designing the content in a way that will bring out the brand benefits, as well as get content to perform better on their channels. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Ankit Agarwal, Founder, Do Your Thng:" text="Ankit Agarwal, Founder, Do Your Thng:">Ankit Agarwal, Founder, Do Your Thng:</cmsannotation> This was a long time coming. The blurring of the line between ads and simple user-generated content needed to be corrected. Users not only have the right to know the difference between the two, they all but demand it. Disclosure labels are unquestionably a step forward in that direction. Besides helping bolster the trust audiences were increasingly hemorrhaging in content creators, the guidelines will hold brands and marketers more accountable. I am gratified ASCI has moved the needle in organizing a niche where entropy was just about beginning to reign supreme.

How ASCI’s new guidelines will impact influencer marketing industry: Experts share their opinion

<ul><li>As we enter a brand new year, we want to crystal gaze into what the year holds for us.</li><li>In today’s feature, experts from the <keyword id="2540701" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Influencer-marketing">Influencer Marketing</keyword> Industry tell us a few key trends and opportunities that the industry will bring forth as we move forward in 2021. </li></ul>2020 pushed businesses of various kinds and sizes to experiment with digital solutions as all activities from attending concerts, and birthday parties to fitness sessions moved from the physical realm to digital. After the COVID-19-induced lockdown, with TVC shoots on hold and people stuck at homes, brands realised that the influencer marketing model is well-suited in a time in which the audience is looking for some inspiration, searching DIY videos, learning new recipes or focusing on self care. This posed a good opportunity for brands and influencers to engage with their audiences with impactful messaging. Brands realigned their strategies, opened up their budgets for digital media to leverage the rising demand for influencer marketing. Today, Indian audiences are watching more online videos than ever before. Nielsen studies show that home-bound consumers have led to a 60% increase in the amount of video content watched globally. The number of live video sessions conducted on social media platforms by content creators also hiked in 2020. As per Facebook US, in the first months of the pandemic alone, the number of users watching live video increased by 50% and the platform launched additional features to support video creators. There was also a shift in perspectives and communication tone -- driving away from superficial, in-your-face, sales-driven content to a more meaningful, two-way and purpose-driven conversation. More content creators and brands started talking about the causes they believe in. To weather the storm of trimmed advertising budgets in the first half of the year, influencers turned to alternative revenue sources like selling merchandise or launching direct-to-consumer products. As a result, COVID has spawned strong growth in influencer marketing and creators have cemented their position boosting consumer trust in 2020. Keeping in mind how 2020 revolutionised the digital industry, we reached out to a few influencer marketing agencies to understand what does the future hold and how is the ecosystem shaping up. Here is what they said: Anuja Deora Sanctis, Founder and CEO, Filter Coffee Co: <div type="image" title="Anuja Filter Coffee" msid="80100767" hostid="261"></div> Influencers this year have used a variety of features to promote brands. There was an increased focus on short Video content, especially Reels, as it is being heavily promoted by Instagram and is cost-effective compared to long videos, providing more authenticity and engagement. Driving brand advocacy through genuine users and exploring varied types of influencers from different walks of life also saw great engagement and growth. For example, for one of our clients in skincare, we collaborated with Face Yoga Expert, Nutritionist, Chefs, and that benefited the brand a lot. The one trend that will grow massively in 2021 will be the rise of Micro &amp; Nano influencers. This is mainly due to high engagement, authenticity, and low-costs and is relevant in the current scenario as most brands have slashed budgets. Apart from the trends in general for influencers, one area where it is really working is skincare and cosmetic brands. Influencers are able to display the benefits and usage of products, so in a lockdown situation, where people cannot go and try the product, they are totally buying what the influencer is saying. Also, because of the way lifestyle e-commerce has developed, like Nykaa, Amazon, etc, to drive traffic to these platforms, you need swipe-up links through stories. Since not many brands have 10,000 followers, they are dependent on influencers to push traffic to their website and drive CTA. This trend is termed Influencer Commerce and I foresee it being one of the most demanded categories next year. Viraj Sheth - Founder and CEO, <keyword id="9491005" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="monk-entertainment">Monk Entertainment</keyword>: <div type="image" title="Viraj Sheth Monk-e" msid="80100797" hostid="261"></div> The biggest trend in influencer marketing in 2021 is going to be creators becoming founders and brand owners. So far, creators have only been resorting to platform revenues and brand deals as major sources of revenues. Although, in 2021, we are going to witness a huge wave of content creators building value-adding brands which are not just selling merchandise but products and services of all varied kinds. We are also going to start observing big brands partnering with creators on equity deals which will incentivise creators to build much deeper, valuable relationships with the brands. Neel Gogia, Co-founder, <keyword id="9617651" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="iplix-media">IPLIX Media</keyword>: <div type="image" title="Neel Gogia" msid="80100803" hostid="261"></div> 2020 has been like a catalyst for the growth of Influencer Marketing in India, not only we explored lots of new content creators but more brands also showed interest in working with influencers for their respective goals. We can expect a trend where more brands heavily focus on the strategies of their influencer marketing campaigns. Gone are the days where you can just hold a product and click a selfie to promote a brand. I feel both influencers and brands will evolve and explore creative ideas collectively to create engaging content. Brands will work with agencies who provide them interesting campaign ideas rather than just a list of influencers and expected reach which happens most of the time. This will make them stand out from other branded content which is already out there and might not be engaging to the audience. Apaksh Gupta, Founder &amp; CEO, One Impression: <div type="image" title="Apaksh Gupta, CEO, oneimpression" msid="80100881" hostid="261"></div> 2020 has changed the perspective of both brands and influencers, leading to a paradigm shift in functionality of influencer marketing. A trend that the ecosystem is harping on and that undeniably is gaining momentum, is the content consumption pattern. Steering away from pictures, people are consuming more videos than ever. They like to be updated with influencers’ lives, which creates space for smart product integrations that brands are now leveraging! Well established platforms like Reels, YouTube, Facebook coupled with new-age ones like Triller &amp; Moj have attracted avid video lovers to create and share short-format videos. In fact, live sessions have been devoured all the more, due to the content relatability and authenticity. Additionally, audio format content (podcasts) has started booming, and we may see it becoming as powerful as videos, in 2021! Ankit Agarwal, Founder, Do Your Thng: <div type="image" title="Ankit Agarwal, Founder, Do Your Thng" msid="80100887" hostid="261"></div> 2020 was the most sobering of realities. It was also the year the rest of the world discovered Dalgona coffee, TikTok got banned, and influencer marketing went to its grassroots. The black swan of 2020 awoke businesses to the power of social platforms and content creators. Creators restored their focus on delivering content that adds genuine value. They also played an integral role in building a sense of community; something people searched for when living in isolation. From a marketing standpoint, we saw a momentous shift from sales-driven campaigns to social good and charities. The lockdown and work from home, which we took to like ducks to water, pushed the needle on one more front. Marketers started bringing in influencers into the creative conversation earlier. Something, we’d been pushing for years. Brands also recognized that creators are more than a vehicle for sales. They can be credible communicators and excellent platforms to listen to changing consumer desires. As our co-founder, who we onboarded recently, Hemant Dua, Ex-CEO of Delhi Daredevils, affirms, the year was a bellwether for what lies ahead. We have ventured through the backwoods, and are finally headed to a more well-travelled path. Both our product and team saw dramatic growth. We’re closing at almost 4 times to what we were last year. As for 2021, I feel it will be a content and creator moment. Till now, brands gave credibility to creators. In the time to come, creators will bring credibility to brands. Shahir Muneer, Founder and Director, Divo: <div type="image" title="Shahir Muneer, Founder and Director, Divo" msid="80100899" hostid="261"></div> Divo has been at the forefront of influencer marketing since the beginning of this segment around 2017. While we have seen tremendous growth ourselves in excess of 100% growth year on year since then, here are few trends for 2021 that we see around the corner. Outcome or engagement-based model: There is a good number of brands/advertisers who have been using influencer marketing for well over 2 years now, and while influencers have so far been limited to scrutiny on their creative or content and their basic stats like followers, reach. We will see multiple advertisers look at the historical data and see what outcome like installs or sales they got via these influencers, and set the price or even inclusion into campaigns. Engagement rate will be a key parameter going forward and purely a high follower count won't suffice. While a shift from paying upfront to an affiliate or performance-based pricing model is not likely immediately, but that is where we are headed to in the future, and this is the beginning for it. Hence it's not enough for influencers to make interesting content, but also be able to engage with their audience and make it a 2-way conversation. Ramya Ramachandran, Founder &amp; CEO, Whoppl: <div type="image" title="Ramya Whoppl" msid="80167495" hostid="261"></div> It is interesting to note how influencer marketing was such a defining phenomenon in the year 2020. Now that brands have fully realised the kind of credibility and cachet that influencers bring to the forefront, one can only wonder how they will now spread their eventual overarching bosom and become an indispensable must-have for a holistic marketing endeavour. 2021 will see the rise and prominence of commerce-led influencer marketing, which will make it imperative for influencer-curated content to drive a relatable conversion. Brands would now like to see how an influencer churns out content that is authentic, and how that content is so relatable that it will lead to a sure-shot, subsequent conversion. If content was King all this while, 2021 will be a game of chess where ‘relatable content’ is the Queen. Kunal Kishore Sinha, Co-founder, ClanConnect: <div type="image" title="Kishore ClanConnect" msid="80113607" hostid="261"></div> Gone are the days of creating content just for the sake of it. 2021 will be all about content with context. The number of influencers in India has witnessed explosive growth over the past year. Content which is not relatable, won’t get the desired engagement. So, the trick is to understand the context, get the background, and then create content that hits just the right mark. How can influencers gain this context? By getting the right insights through data analysis. The purpose of influencer campaign, at the heart of it, is creating engaging, interactive content for the consumers on behalf of a brand. Data analysis can present a wealth of insights about the audience base, the kind of content that has worked for them in the past, popular topics keywords searched by consumers, and more, allowing influencers to create content that will have a deeper impact and achieve the highest ROI. Context backed by data will, then, be the mantra of influencer activity in 2021. Prashant Sharma, Chief Marketing Officer, Nofiltr Group: <div type="image" title="prashant-sharma-nofiltr" msid="80118072" hostid="261"></div> Influencer marketing was a highly likely outcome of the pandemic, not only because of the availability of the campaign but also because of the changing way among the audience to receive communications. Demand is shifting, and both brands, as well as content creators, need to understand more about the value of content and what needs to be out in the market to captivate the attention of their targeted audience so as to thrive in a post-covid world. We are expecting that influencer marketing is here to stay and grow more and more. Brands have started relying more on content creators now to communicate their message to consumers in a more natural way, to maintain their relevance and meet their target audience online. Just because of this, content creators will have an upper hand. The industry of Influencer marketing is on track to become a $15 billion dollar industry by 2022 and it shows no sign of slowing down at all. Influencer marketing is going to be a game-changer in the times to come. 2020 literally gave a platform to several new content creators and brands also did not shy away from leveraging their skills and popularity to their own benefit. A massive trend that we can expect to witness moving forward is how brands will merge content marketing, influencer marketing and social media marketing. They will focus more on finding and partnering with those influencers who share similar values as themselves and will enter into long-term relationships with them, rather than onboarding them on a contractual basis. As for the content creators, they will be creating more audio and video content. So podcasts will become the next big thing along with the likes of Instagram Reels. Also, micro-influencers will emerge in huge numbers who do not have many followers but enjoy the popularity amongst a niche audience. Such influencers will help brands find their foothold with the specific group of people who would align with the goals of the brands. And the best part about such micro-influencers is that their audiences frequently engage with them. How events unfold will be interesting to watch.

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