Hypd, a leading tech platform, enabling content creators ( also known as influencers) to drive commerce, has successfully raised $4 million in a pre-series A round from Orios Venture Partners. The funding round saw the existing investors Sauce VC and Better Capital double down in the round. With the recent funding, Hypd is speeding up the acquisition of creators, branching out into more categories, growing its team and product.
India alone has over 220 million Instagram accounts, over 450 million Youtube accounts, and over 150 Million Snapchat accounts.The top decile of users on these platforms influence others’ buying behaviour through their content, providing monetizing opportunities for creators.
Hypd’s tech platform enables creators to build their own multi-brand digital storefronts, inspired by their content, via which they can curate products & services and enable a native checkout for their followers on social media . Since its inception 12 months ago, Hypd has experienced remarkable growth, with a GMV growth of over 40-fold and total creator earnings touching a million dollars.
The top-performing creators have seen an increase in earnings upto 100x, top 10% of the creators have grown their earnings by 25X , and over 50% of creators have doubled their income each quarter. Hypd aims to empower 100,000 creators by 2025, both English-Hindi and regional, with their own digital storefronts, enabling them to tap into India’s $100B commerce market.
Ashwarya Garg, Cofounder, Hypd said “We are living in a time and age where the sum product of our consumer persona and buying behaviour, is directly influenced by the content we watch. However, behind the scenes, the creators who drive this behavioural change with a lot of hard work are not being rewarded fairly.
There has been a global explosion of creators harnessing the power of their self-built online communities. By leveraging their own distribution, creators will directly be responsible to drive 30% to 40% of all eCommerce, in this decade. Hypd is here to enable an attribution system & a fair share of profit to the creators, for this change.”
Hypd enables creators in India to “monetize their influence” and earn revenues by leveraging their own distribution . On the other side, Hypd enables brands to invest their influencer marketing budgets more effectively, based on data analytics and insights at scale , providing a return on investment beyond impressions and clicks. Since brands get direct orders from the customer, not only do they receive the customer details, but are also able to correctly attribute the conversion to the creator. This mutually beneficial relationship allows creators and brands to reward each other for their efforts leading to creators earning higher commissions compared to other alternatives available in the market today.
Anup Jain, Managing Partner at Orios Venture Partners, said, “We are excited to partner with Hypd as they enable creators and brands to drive the e-commerce industry in India. The days of the big-ticket movie actor signups and a single 30 second TV advertisement being alone able to drive a brand are over. Brand Marketers have realized the power of influencer- led marketing that is currently growing at a CAGR of 25% and is set to reach a GMV of $4 billion by 2025. It is very difficult to identify, manage and track hundreds of creators and their ROI manually. This is our thesis behind our investment in Hypd which enables creators and brands on their tech platform .The team’s vision, execution, and growth with both stakeholders in a short time have been remarkable.”
Akshay Bhatnagar, Cofounder, Hypd, mentioned
“Due to accelerated digitization and huge shift in shopping behaviour, D2C market in India is speculated to be worth $100B by 2025. For all these challenger brands, acquiring consumers at low CAC has become a P0 problem to solve. Our vision is to enable millions of these creators having massive relevant distribution as followers, to become mini marketplaces for these brands, where discovery, content engagement & conversion will all happen at one single destination. A new third bucket of sales!”
Manu Chandra, Founder & Managing Partner, Sauce VC highlighted “The biggest challenge in working with creators is generating attributable sales for brands directly. Hypd has delivered a unique platform that offers not just awareness but actual sales for brands and then shares ample margins with creators on every sale. This breaks away from the traditional agency model focused largely on awareness and affiliate models which have poor economics as they don’t work directly with brands. It’s been a pleasure to back the Hypd team again as they build out potentially India’s largest, fastest growing and most profitable creator economy platform.”
Although the key categories driving Hypd’s growth have been Fashion and Beauty so far, there has been a steady increase in GMV for categories like Fitness and Food & Beverages as well. With this fundraise, Hypd is planning to facilitate and expedite growth in categories such as pet care, travel, and home decor.
Having an active waitlist of over 1,00,000 creators, is a testament to HYPD’s commitment to building a sustainable income source for its creators
