In a world of automated e-commerce, a couple of entrepreneurs realised that for many potential customers, there was still a lot of comfort in transacting with a bit of conversation, even if over text-based chat.
Snehal Dhruve and Bineet Desai, who are brothers-in-law, and had already founded two start-ups: Being Baby, which dealt with baby products, and Go Hero, focussing on travel. Both ventures used conversational e-commerce using AI, or artificial intelligence. In 2016 they decided to put their expertise and learnings to work for other clients, and set up Superfan, a real-time automated customer engagement platform.
“Globally, 3 billion users are on messaging apps,” Mr. Dhruve says. “150 million are in India. Both [numbers] are growing fast. AI-based commerce through messaging opens up this user base.” It’s a space in which there is still relatively little competition: other players include Sprout Social, Telescope TV and Chirpify.
As its name suggests, Superfan is designed to help products and brands (which could also be personalities), connect better with the people who admire them, using AI through chatbots or replies on social media. The chatbots are capable of ‘conversing’ in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, and some foreign languages as well, across 11 platforms, including Facebook’s Messenger and Skype.
For influencers — entertainers, sportspersons, business leaders, politicians, even star bloggers — with fan bases too large to possibly interact with one-on-one, the claim is that it can give them the ability to increase engagement in a way that feels personal. “Superfan connects them with audiences on a one-on-one basis giving a voice to the end-audience,” Mr. Desai, who handles business development, says. “This ultimately results in a better brand value for the influencer.”
For organisations who want to provide information or services, Myra Sharma, Manager, Operations, says, they maintain websites, apps, live chat, forums, shopping carts, social media, and so on. Superfan’s bots help these brands “talk directly to the customer on a platform that the customer is [already] present on, like social media and chat messaging platforms. With AI and intelligent chatbot interfaces, the need to install additional apps gets eliminated.”
At base level, the bots allow clients to send personalised e-cards, structured messages, images, and sound effects. “Using NLP [natural language processing], our bots are able to differentiate between right and wrong answers to questions posed by brands, delivering different responses and rewards based on these answers,” Mr. Desai says. They can execute tasks given specific commands, and can listen and understand, and respond in a human-like manner, driving conversations to an end goal.
Superfan’s dashboard lets clients view charts and graphs on follower demographics, locations and engagement levels. “Identifying what people really want through their queries is what makes chatbots an ideal tool for engagement,” Mr. Desai says. “Many companies have been working with us on data analytics.” It also shows the most common responses to questions their bot may ask, and the most relevant — depending on their goals, for instance, sales promotion, or customer service — conversations. “The tools enable them to both dig deep into conversations and get a high-level view of how their content is performing.”
The company has been working with filmmaker Red Chillies Entertainment since June, developing chatbots and AI campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. “Jab Harry Met Sejal was one of the first films to have an immersive chatbot in India,” says Binda Dey, RCE’s marketing head. “The chatbot was launched on Facebook and allowed users to chat with Harry the tour guide and get travel tips and get a customised poster. More than 2 million conversations were recorded during the campaign.” For Ittefaq, Dev, the investigating cop from the film, would give challenges and clues to users, who would help him solve his cases. “Innovative ways of engaging fans has always been a focus area for us. Superfan has helped us achieve this with tech support for our digital activities that we have done during the campaigns. We have been able to achieve very personalised engagement that has kept fans hooked through the campaign.”
Starting with ₹30 lakh of their own money and one employee, Mr. Dhruve and Mr. Desai found validation of their idea within six months, with pre-seed funding of $25 thousand from TSI, an investment firm in the USA, and ₹15 lakh from Thinqbate, Mumbai. The company staffing is still minimal, with 11 employees serving their 50-odd clients, which include Facebook, Twitter, Amadeus, Line, Balaji Telefims, Viacom 18, Dharma Productions, Zee Cinema, Excel Entertainment, and Prive, and others, like Hero MotoCorp, Amazon, and Mahindra Racing, have also used their technology for engaging with their audiences. Earnings come from customisation fees and messaging charges, Mr. Dhruve says, and the company is operationally profitable with net profit margin of ~30% and more than 100% growth year-on-year.
Expansion beyond their current markets — India, the USA, Singapore and Thailand — is on the cards, and funds for that are being raised. Meanwhile, Mr. Desai says, “Our prime focus is to continue to be the market leaders in the chatbot vertical in India.”
Superfan
Founders: Snehal Dhruve, Bineet Desai
Founded: 2015
Funding: Bootstrapped; pre-seed funding from TSI, and Thinqbate
Employees: 11
Web:superfan.ai
