AMRITA KAUR
O
NE had problem get-
ting the word out
about the software
products he was building on
the side while holding a full-
time job.
The other had witnessed
the power of celebrities in
word-of-mouth marketing, yet he saw
issues plaguing them.
Mr Swayam Narain saw that there
was no way to track who liked and com-
mented on social media posts and what
its target audience was for his mother’s
fashion design label in India. The label
engages with celebrities to create aware-
ness.
Meanwhile, Mr Nisarg Shah who
was building mobile apps and websites
and “strongly believed in the power of
word-of-mouth marketing but saw no
tools to enable it”.
Their problems were different yet re-
lated.
The two met at Entrepreneur First,
where participants look for other cre-
ative minds from diverse fields to team
up with and to conceive an innovative
new product.
Mr Shah, 25, moved to Singapore
last year to join the programme after
hearing about it from a friend in India,
while Mr Narain, 24, heard about it
from his roommate while pursuing his
degree in computer science at the Singa-
pore University of Technology and De-
sign.
They became good friends over the
programme and while brainstorming
on potential disruptors in digital mar-
keting, they realised that their thoughts
aligned about the gap in influencer mar-
keting and that they had complimen-
tary skillsets to build technology that
could bridge the gap.
Said Mr Narain, who was born in
Lucknow: “While marketers were
reaching out to celebrities for spon-
sored posts, they could never justify
their money spent because they didn’t
know who were commenting, viewing
and liking their pictures.
“There had to be a better way than
guesswork. That was when we thought
about influencers and celebrities and
how we could help marketers figure out
the right one to work with for their prod-
uct or service.”
But rather than working with celebri-
ties, it made more sense to work with
small-time influencers, said Mr Shah.
“You can work with big names but
because they have such a wide audi-
ence, you are casting the net too wide.
“We got better results when we
worked with smaller scale but still
pretty influential people with 10,000
or 20,000 followers and have the kind
of audience that the marketer’s product
needs to be targeted at.
“For example, a bike company is cre-
ating a specific sports bike — there is no
need to use a celebrity for that because
it may not resonate with its followers.
But if you work with a cycling pro who
is an influencer, there will be more
meaningful engagement and the partic-
ular post will deliver more return on in-
vestment (ROI) for the marketer,” said
Mr Shah, who is Mumbai-born.
End-to-end solution
With this idea in mind, Mr Shah and Mr
Narain built Affable in August last year.
It is an end-to-end platform that
brings intelligence and automation to
influencer marketing.
It derives insight about influencers
and their audience, using computer vi-
sion algorithms on their social media
posts.
Its solution automates every step —
discovering influencers, campaign man-
agement and ROI measurement, mak-
ing it faster and more effective for
brands to scale influencer marketing
globally.
Currently, Affable, which was built
on a $25,000 fund from Entrepreneur
First, is focused on tracking posts on In-
stagram in the Singapore market.
Affable uses artificial intelligence to
extract information from every public
profile on Instagram and creates inter-
est graphs.
“Say a brand wants to target fitness
enthusiasts, we already know which in-
fluencer can help us target them in Sin-
gapore,” said Mr Narain.
Affable’s discovery platform show-
cases influencers across travel, lifestyle,
fitness and fashion spheres in Singa-
pore.
Marketers can work with Affable to
discover influencers and carry out their
campaigns.
It is a self-service web platform for
them to discover recommended influ-
encers according to the criteria of their
target audience.
If the brand is interested in working
with a particular influencer, it can send
a message to the influencer with the
campaign details.
The influencer will then upload the
post to the dashboard, allowing the
marketer to approve it before it goes
live on the influencer’s profile. Affable
then tracks the engagement of the par-
ticular post.
Said Mr Shah: “For the marketer,
they can check if their money is spent
on the right audience or not.
“A cosmetic brand, whose target au-
dience is females, may reach out to a
pretty female influencer and her post
may receive 10,000 likes but if 90 per
cent of the likes are from males, this de-
notes a bad ROI for the marketer.”
With Affable, the marketer knows
the result of the post.
“Without it, they may keep spend-
ing money blindly without knowing
who they are reaching out to and if it
was a successful outreach,” said Mr
Narain.
Currently, the discovery dashboard
for marketers is up and running.
The campaign management and
campaign ROI measurement tool is still
being built.
Marketers are charged between
$200 to $500 monthly depending on
the range of service — discovering influ-
encers, campaign management and
ROI measurement — they engage from
Affable.
The founders, who are Indian citi-
zens, are also planning to offer the ser-
vice for YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter
and LinkedIn.
The start-up is working with compa-
nies in the space of lifestyle, parenting,
e-commerce and fashion.
Mr Narain and Mr Shah, who have
made Singapore their home feels that
starting their own company gives them
a sense of purpose — “we are now
working towards a vision, constantly
improvising on our own beliefs and con-
tinually learning in the process. This
keeps us motivated and excited about
tomorrow,” said Mr Narain.
➥
Game-changing...
Affable founders
Nisarg Shah (left)
and Swayam
Narain having a
discussion about
the platform.
P
H
O
T
O
:
A
M
R
I
T
A
K
A
U
R
Tapping on influencer marketing
A fortnightly series on Indian
start-ups in Singapore
Affable provides a platform for those who want to get more out of it
Page6
February16,2018
tabla
!
BUSINESS