UNLU, a new celebrity engagement app has been launched in India by 4 serial entrepreneurs, Vipul Agrawal, Akshay Pruthi, Anurag Dalia and Himanshu Periwal who have over 40 years of cumulative experience in the start-up ecosystem. The platform already has over 300+ celebrities including Harbhajan Singh, Saina Nehwal, Salim Merchant, Nupur Sanon, R Madhavan, Kalki Koechlin, among others.
UNLU is exclusively designed as a celebrity-to-fan connect platform which lets users directly request for advice, a greeting or a heart to heart comment from their favourite celebrity. The app has been created to give fans across the country a unique and personalized experience, and intends to give them access to over 10,000 celebrities and influencers across genres such as sports, cinema, music, comedy, lifestyle, astrology and social media.
UNLU will cater to three distinctive segments namely Celebrities, Fans and Brands. One of the USPs of the app is the way it makes celebrities more accessible to their fans and helps them in turn to monetise their spare time. Another differentiator is the way it aids small and medium brands towards getting a brand endorsement from celebrities at a fraction of the price they usually charge.
Vipul Agrawal, Co-Founder, UNLU adds “UNLU has been meticulously developed, following our in-depth research to understand the present sentiment and demand-supply trends in this space. For the first time, celebrities on the platform can improve their earnings by 6X in their free time, apart from a 168% increase in their social media reach, thereby helping them to improve the longevity of their personal brand. Fans on their part can engage one-to-one with celebrities through a variety of mediums including Video Shout-outs. And brands stand to benefit by being able to generate a celebrity endorsement through a video shout-out at less than 1/10th the cost.”
Adds Himanshu Periwal, co-Founder, UNLU, “Our thesis is to build the biggest supply of celebrities across all possible categories, and offer multiple other forms of fan engagement beyond video shoutouts, which will ensure a fan on our platform finds the right celebrity and format for a one-to-one engagement. Though there has been an explosive growth in online fan following of celebrities, these fans are limited to a one-way conversation with celebrities on all the leading social media platforms. Thus, we continue to build unlu, with a strong conviction of taking over the fan engagement space from these social media giants, by offering a direct one-to-one fan-to-celebrity connect.”
UNLU has been launched at a time when brands are under revenue and profitability pressure due to the current economic crisis and most are looking to spend wisely on ad campaigns involving celebrities. Unlike the past when brands used to spend crores on campaigns, they will be looking for video shoutout formats where higher ROI can be achieved at a fraction of the cost. The app is a new-age solution that makes social media endorsements and celebrity interactions enterprising and exciting.
Study by UNLU
A study by UNLU before leading up to the platform found that there are over 10,000 celebrities and influencers in India, however only about 100 odd are A-listers. The remaining do however have over million-plus social engagements to their credit, but do not have the means to monetize their fan base digitally. Moreover, all of them realize that their personal brand is a perishable commodity, and all of them invariably are keen to increase their revenue opportunities by leveraging their brand.
The study also found that Fans in India are present on multiple social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok to follow people they adore, but they cannot engage in one-to-one conversations with them through these. They found that the average post on a popular social platform by an A/A+ celebrity gets an average of 600 comments from users asking them to send them a DM, or to reply to their comment or to share their contact or even chat with them.
They also found that new-age brands, SMEs and start-ups do not believe in spending crores on celebrities for ad films any more. While they do want endorsements from these celebrities, they do not see sufficient ROI in paying so much for these brand ads.