Social Media Platform Feature : SocialGiri - Search Iconic Individuals with Ease

About the Platform

Socialgiri (SG) launched on October 23, 2013 with the mission to curate, verify and simplify the search for established and nascent icons within select industries, while offering those influencers the potential to maximize their fan followings. It’s a free app available on the App Store and Google Play.

What do we offer to our consumers?

Discovering a celebrity on social media can be challenging and time-consuming due to parody accounts, competing platforms, confusing account names and lack of time, SG clears the way for fans to quickly customize their celebrity social media experience. At the same time, SG assists icons maximize their followers and earning potential by easily paving the way for fans to find and follow celebrities.

To accomplish this SG:

Consolidates the verified social media streams for the top 350+ celebrities in Hollywood, Bollywood, music & fashion.

Offers the opportunity for fans to search and select the celebs to follow, creating a customized stream of information with notifications on new posts, as desired.

Encourages users to like/love/share within the SG app for fans that input Facebook, Twitter and Instagram logins.

Our Team:

CEO & Co-Founder: Masood Khatri.

Over 20 years technology experience with institutions such as Prudential and Citi and as an entrepreneur with Envesage as CEO and ebusinessware as a partner.

Co-Founder: Margaret Kaminski Simons.

Over 20 years experience in finance, including positions as a vice president at Goldman Sachs and an adjunct professor of finance at Rutgers University.

Co-founder: Gazala Wani.

President, Envesage; 16 years experience in bpo, account and product management.

Co-Founder: Suhail Ahmed

3 years Managing Director, Envesage overseeing development team in India.

Whom do we cater to?

We are catering to people that enjoy hearing directly from film, television, fashion, music, sports and political icons whether they are social media savvy or not. Socialgiri offers customized celeb stream for our user’s favorite celebs so that they can have the most up to date information on the people they care most about.

Socialgiri stands at the precipice of explosive growth in India with regards to both social media participation and smartphone conversion. With team members who have experienced the technology boom firsthand in the US market while other are programming in India, it was only natural we build a global platform, and tailor it to the audience that would be most receptive. We know India and its active adoption of new technologies is ready for Socialgiri.

To date, it is not surprising that Socialgiri’s particular mix of social media, smartphones and celebrity attracts mostly under-30 users, but with the addition of industries such as politics on the horizon, we think our platform’s offerings will be interesting to an even wider audience.

What motivated us to start up?

We are passionate building and implementing new technology ideas. We observed the gap in fully engaging with the audience interested in entertainment on social media, and decided to explore and capture this market. Socialgiri is the right team for the challenge given its passion for technology and movies and its experience implementing and supporting large scale technology, digital and business platforms.

What's in a name?

Masood coined the name one day while inspired by the growing use of the word “giri” in Indian entertainment titles to describe a passion about a certain subject. He immediately saw the connection with the app we were developing, and we all immediately knew the name was right. Even though Socialgiri is a global app, the use of a bit of Hindi in the title acknowledges that India is our inspiration and initial target audience.

Industry as we foresee

Social media continues to create intimacy and connection around the world, allowing participants with similar interested find each other, exchange thoughts and even develop a relationship. Some industries exhibit a unique position in social media, those where icons attract thousands, even millions of followers. Socialgiri continues to explore these industries and increase the accessibility of these icons to their fans. We understand there is a unique opportunity in getting to understand the fan audience as well as explore what it means to be an icon in 2014.

Socialgiri is so fortunate to be present as smartphone and social media growth explodes within India. Over 50% of the US population participate in social media or own a smartphone, compared to barely 5% of India. Smartphones and social media are increasingly linked as a growing percentage of users participate on social media via a mobile device. Simply put as technology improves, smartphones prices will decline and participation will skyrocket, first among the under 25 set, but eventually across all demographics.

Currently we are....

In less than three months, with a minimal marketing budget, Socialgiri boasts over 10,000 registered users. We are currently in the midst of completing major additions to our platform’s offerings including more celebs, more industries as well as the ability to hone into specific roles within industries. For example, within the Bollywood category fans will be able to see actors and directors as separate subcategories.

We are constantly experimenting with new, innovative ways to reach our audience. For example, we are under discussion for launching tablet and web versions of Socialgiri in the near future.

Our biggest challenge was..

Socialgiri’s opportunities and possibilities for expansion seem limitless, yet with our budget, we scrutinize each idea to ensure that we can develop them fully. For example, we think the world would love our functionality, however, our physical presence and marketing resources forces us to concentrate geographically as well as strictly monitor and measure our marketing results to ensure we maximize user reach.

We want to dominate the world by..

With our next big release at the end of the first quarter of 2014, SG adds sports and politics to its industries, growing to over 500 icons crowd sourced primarily from the suggestions of our fan users.

We see Socialgiri to be the celebrity network where we empower our users to connect with famous personalities directly and also promote new talent. Our goal is to for Socialgiri to become #1 Social Platform in the celebrities, fans and famous personalities.

We’re making moolah by...

Socialgiri is a free app available on Google Play and the App Store. We are currently focused on refining our user base and responding to their needs. As we grow together, we foresee the revenue opportunities organically developing. We are currently developing products that will add new functionalities and generate revenues, and we hope to have more specifics regarding their launch later in 2014.

Our What The **** Moment

There were a few funny moments, Socialgiri the name itself is loved by the teens, but a co-founder’s senior investment banker friend (of Indian decent) in US crinkled his nose when he heard the name Socialgiri.

One good one, one of our developer’s sister overhearing here colleagues talking about Socialgiri and how cool it was, she going back to them and letting them know that her brother is one of the developers.

Our launch coincided with the release of the movie Policegiri, which made it look like our ‘giri’ was all around.

Lastly, Are you hiring?

We have some big plans on the horizon so we’ll be hiring shortly. We’ll be looking for individuals who have some tech experience, is excited by the pace of an entrepreneurial venture and just as importantly, loves a little celebrity.