India’s Silicon Valley, Bangalore boasts of over 1700 startups and is considered as the world’s second fastest growing startup ecosystem. The city has some of the most successful and funded startups such as Flipkart and Urban Ladder. So what makes these startups so successful?
Startups are leveraging digital marketing effectively and marketing themselves on a shoe-string budget to drive brand awareness and sales. Here is a look at some of the innovative social media campaigns by funded startups in Bangalore.
Founded by: Sachin and Binny Bansal
Funding so far: $3.2 billion in 12 rounds from 16 investors
Flipkart is one of India’s largest ecommerce portals to buy a wide range of products including electronics, books, clothing and accessories.
Flipkart, known for its innovative social media campaigns, came up with a campaign to create a buzz around the revamped mobile application and increase new users. They came up with a hashtag #DoThumbThing. The idea of this campaign was - people use their thumb to do almost all their activities on their phone, so now use the power of your thumb to shop for anything on your app.
As part of the campaign, the brand did the following things:
The campaign worked so well that the app on the Play store got a rating of over 4.3 with installs in the range of 10 Million to 50 Million.
Launch video 1
Launch video 2
Founded by: Richa Kar and Kapil Karekar
Funding so far: 8 million in series A and B funding
Zivame.com is a leading website to buy lingerie with over 2000 lingerie styles to choose from. Zivame.com last year ran a #SalesmanWaliBracampaign for all the victims of bra shopping tragedy where women have been forced to buy lingerie from sales men who are not competent. Zivame.com - the lingerie expert asked their women followers on social media to share their various horror and awkward stories.
The quirky visuals, gifs and campaign hashtag coined by Zivame created a buzz on all platforms and created a good brand recall for Zivame.
Founders: Ashish Goel, Rajiv Srivatsa
Funding so far:$77M in 4 Rounds
Urban Ladder is an online furniture and home décor company with presence in 12 cities across India.
#TheHomecoming
Late last year, the brand created a stir on social media by creating a short film “The Homecoming” to celebrate the essence of family. This short but impactful film was created with a core objective of creating brand awareness among its target audience. The film showcases a couple taking a decision to move into their son’s home.
The beauty of this film is that it is a simple concept that strikes a chord with the common man and has a fundamental message that beautiful homes are not just made from fancy furniture but emotions and thoughts play an important role. The video garnered ~900K views on YouTube and has been shared on social media platforms widely.
Founders: Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati
Total Equity Funding: $1.18B in 7 Rounds
Ola is one of India’s most popular cab booking app. It is the also the largest platform with 40,000+ cars across 22 cities and growing!
Ola has come up with many innovative campaigns and one of the most popular campaigns they did was the #ChaloNiklo campaign. The brand leveraged Twitter & Facebook by posting engaging photo ads and video ads featuring content of its #ChaloNiklo campaign. The Twitter Contest helped them create a buzz around the hashtag. Ola also directed people to its website with link ads in the News Feed and right column, and ran mobile app ads to drive people directly to its mobile app.
Another interesting campaign that the brand ran was the #TypesOfFans social media campaign during IPL season 5. The campaign offered a drivers’ view of the different types of cricket fans that they get to travel with during IPL season 5. They made a video dedicating it to crazy cricket fans and the amusing behavior that they display. They also conducted a contest on Twitter, where the brand was able to get entries from cricket fans and engage with them.
Founders: Sanjay and Yashodhara Shroff
Funding: Rs 50 crore in angel funding
Styletag.com is an online curated fashion and lifestyle startup.
Fashion brand Styetag launched a powerful campaign titled “Face of Courage” and the firm hired acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal to model its ‘Viva n Diva' collection. Apart from this, the brand also announced that they would donate 30% of its revenue from this initiative to Agarwal and the Chhanv Foundation, which supports acid attack survivors.
"This initiative directly associates us with issues of importance," said founder Sanjay Shroff, "thereby making us more recognizable to our clientele, the women of India." The campaign did well on social media and the brand got recognition with a lot of stories, both online and offline.
Founders: Subhra Chadda
Founders: $2M in 2 Rounds
Chumbak sells designer t-shirts, tins, coffee mugs and other quirky Indian products. Chumbak launched #bobbymissing campaign to promote the opening of their New Delhi store to create a buzz and engage with their customers and fans on social media. They used a character from their popular Bobble Heads collection and constantly updated their pages with candid images announcing the spotting of the missing Bobble Head Bobby in various big events and cities, which got them good traction on social media. The campaign ended with Bobby finally making an appearance thus introducing their Delhi store.
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