Satyajit Deb Roy, Director - Sales, ShareChat, on driving traffic from not just Tier 2 & 3 markets but also making a mark in Tier 1 cities After clocking record downloads, ShareChat is now targeting to onboard top brands on their platform. The indigenous social media platform is creating solutions for marketers that would help them to drive maximum engagements. Satyajit Deb Roy, Director - Sales, Sharechat, talks to e4m on driving traffic from not just Tier 2 and 3 markets but also making a mark in Tier 1 cities, in terms of monetization, unique offerings to brands and more. Excerpts:

ShareChat began its journey in 2015. There were social media platforms existed back then, but all of them were restricted to English, and were complicated.  Indian internet users hailing from Tier 2, 3 & 4 cities found it tough to be expressive in English. There was a content vacuum in the Indian languages space and ShareChat was at first created to address that need. Over the past 4 months, especially during the first phase of lockdown, we have witnessed an exponential growth, post-lockdown era we have grown from 60 million MAU (monthly active users) to 160 million MAU, average user time spent increased from 24 minutes to 31 minutes daily. Today, ShareChat stands as the only language-first social media platform which can offer scale to the advertisers and brands and drive the required volume of traffic among the language-first social media users not only from Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities but also from metros and Tier 1 cities. What are the tools you are offering marketers? How can marketers look at gaining from investing in ShareChat? Sharechat brings in unique capabilities with delivering reach to the advertisers and brands, along with engagement. The intent is to connect brands with the targeted audience on our platform through every possible touchpoint. We have built a robust ad-tech platform to help the brands reach scale, with native advertising in video and banner assets, and drive impact through the homepage pinned post, customised for every brand, which gets visible to the targeted users as the first post on their homepage. As brands demanded high impact for their campaigns on the platform, we introduced the idea of exit interstitial, which appears to the targeted users while exiting the platform. This generally includes a banner or a 6-second video. We have recently introduced a 360 degree solution called Divas. This drives engagement for the brands through branded user-generated content (UGC), hashtag challenges along with top creators and influencers on ShareChat to drive KPI's like sales, downloads etc. That said, we have also rolled out programmatic solutions recently and are experimenting with a selective set of brands. Recently, Kurkure launched its #BaapReBaap campaign on ShareChat, to generate buzz around its two new limited-edition flavours in the North and East markets. Considering the language preference in these geographies, the campaign was launched in 4 languages  - Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and Odia. The campaign was launched with Kurkure's video commercials for these flavours with Akshay Kumar as the brand ambassador. The commercial generated 6.6 Mn views on ShareChat from these 4 languages within a short span of 1 week. The campaign went viral on ShareChat on its launch day itself.  A GIF video filter was created to replicate the effect of video commercials where Akshay Kumar is seen with Kurkure pieces moving around his head as he struggles to identify the spices in the new Kurkure flavours. 5000+ UGC videos were posted, generating more than 13.5 million views and 50000 branded hashtag. Help us understand your monetisation plans. What are the verticals you are focusing on for monetisation? We have witnessed a healthy growth since we opened our platform for brand integrations. Today, ShareChat is silently leading the social media revolution with brands focusing on regional outreach. Our regional strength in Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities, coupled with our ad solutions, is opening new marketing avenues for marketers who want to connect with regional first audiences. Brands are very interested to reach out to the unexplored regional market and today, only ShareChat can offer the user engagement that brands need beyond metros and Tier I cities. Today, ShareChat is the only Indian social platform to have been included in AOP (Annual Operating Plan) by every leading digital media agency. While the possibilities are endless, we have seen increasing interests from the companies belonging to e-commerce, consumer durables, FMCG, telecom, gaming, automotive and many more verticals. We are expanding our focus beyond these verticals, and would like to cater to more than 25 consumer-focused verticals in the foreseeable future.  What are the unique propositions ShareChat is offering to the brands/marketers? With increasing internet penetration, brands are very interested to reach out to the mass Indian audience and only ShareChat can offer the user engagement that brands need beyond metros and Tier I cities. With ShareChat’s scale and massive reach among native language speaking population, it is becoming an important destination for brands to maintain a recall heartbeat with their consumers. Our focus continues to be driving good performance advertisements and solutions for brands. We already have very favourable responses from brands. In just about a year since we started monetisation, over 150 brands have signed up with us and worked with us on multiple occasions. If you look at the growth of the internet today, more than 90 percent of users are coming from non-metro cities unaware of the nuances of the western internet. We are at the forefront of this Indian internet revolution. Users are coming to ShareChat to discover content, and also consume content in the comfort of their own language, societal norms and interests. How is ShareChat preparing for the festive seasons in terms of monetizing? India, being a diverse country, celebrates every festival driven by communities and geographies. However, the entire nation unites during the festive season. After a prolonged phase of uncertainty, the coming festive season will usher in positivity and hope and  Sharechat will celebrate this  positivity and renewed hope, as reflected by its users. ShareChat being a mirror to India’s cultural diversity, witnessed a similar trend on the platform. This unique proposition draws the attention of the advertisers and brands towards ShareChat to connect to their audience in their native languages. For example, brands targeting the Bengali community through Durga Puja celebration, while Hindi speaking audiences can be reached out to during Navratri celebrations. A similar trend can be witnessed during Diwali and Kali Puja, or the harvesting festival known as Bihu, Baisakhi, Poila Baisakh etc. There can be umpteen instances that highlight the diversified celebration across the country. Due to this, the advertisers find ShareChat really impactful because of  its strength, that exemplifies its capabilities to connect with the language-first audience in their native language. And, only ShareChat can manage to deliver this language strength to a brand at scale. This festive season, we already have over 50 brands signing up with us for festive campaigns, and we hope to have over 50 more brands by the end of this festive season that ends with New year Celebrations. This also highlights immense confidence in the people’s spending prosperity.