MUMBAI: Abhinav Jain, Vice President of Roposo, is a technology leader with a vision to democratize commerce and entrepreneurship for individuals and business growth. Abhinav joined Roposo, a creator-driven pop-culture-led live entertainment commerce platform, after Glance's acquisition of Shop101 and Dash101 (his founding companies) in 2021. At Roposo, he and his team are working towards fueling the platform’s growth and scaling its reach. 

Radio & Music spoke to Abhinav Jain to know more about how Roposo is becoming a pop-culture destination and revolutionizing the music category like never before. He spoke about their commitment towards creator community, the recently concluded live music event – Music All Day, the various initiatives being undertaken by Roposo, amongst other things.

Check the Interview below:

Tell us about the overall Roposo journey and how it is becoming a pop-culture destination for creators and users both.

When Glance, a non-consolidated subsidiary of InMobi, acquired Roposo in 2019 as a short video application, we were ahead of the curve in realizing its potential as a digital destination for live entertainment and live commerce. Fast forward to October last year, Roposo became India’s first ever ‘creator-led live entertainment commerce’ platform. The creator-led live commerce model has been successful in global markets, and we believed it had the potential to disrupt the shopping space in India as well. We are delighted to be the frontrunners in the live commerce category in the country, with ambitions to launch Roposo globally as well. As younger audiences tend to want more innovative ways to purchase, they often look to their favourite digital influencers to recommend these products and are more impulsive in their buying patterns.

The acquisition of Shop101, the Glance Collective JV and the investment in Collective Artists Network (CAN) were initial steps for us towards setting up the live commerce piece in India. Shop101 powers Roposo’s end-to-end commerce framework enabling discovery to delivery. The investment into CAN gives us access to some of the best talent the country has to offer. Through the Glance Collective JV, Roposo is co-creating original D2C labels with leading celebrities and creators in India. In 2021, we launched ‘EK’ with Ektaa R Kapoor in the home décor, furnishings, and wellness accessories space and ‘KRA’ with BeYouNick (aka Nikunj Lotia) which is a limited-edition, hyped streetwear brand. In 2022, we launched DCRAF with Rana Daggubati in the men’s grooming category. We also extended the EK brand’s offerings to ethnic wear apparel this year.

Roposo as a digital destination of contemporary pop culture, aims to provide a ‘virtual mall’ like environment to users, especially the GenZ or Gen Now as we call them. They can shop for products recommended by their favourite creators and influencers in real-time while they get entertained by some of the most talented live streamers in India. The last few years of the pandemic have given a great impetus to online entertainment and social commerce, and we have gone a level further by doing this live, engaging audiences in a new-age, immersive and interactive manner.

While we are dedicated to the ever-evolving consumer and their dynamic needs, we are parallelly deeply invested in our growing creator community. Giving wings to ‘creator’preunership, we have almost 500 creators across live entertainment and live commerce across categories like fashion & beauty, health & fitness, electronics, home décor, lifestyle, and more on Roposo. Our live commerce creators choose from over 350 plus partner brands as they create engaging content and sell to their audience products curated by them through their unique virtual pop stores. They have great opportunities to earn as the monetization model is a tri-party partnership wherein apart from Roposo and the brand, the creators also earn a revenue share on every transaction made. Moreover, they can potentially reach over 200 million users across Glance and Roposo given that all live entertainment and live commerce on the Glance lock screen, comes exclusively from Roposo. We will focus on grooming the top 1000 live streamers of the country, most of whom we expect will drive the majority of the live commerce transactions.

How is Roposo revolutionizing the music category, especially on the live music front?

We believe we have a thriving ecosystem of live entertainment creators, especially in the music arena and we are ecstatic about the possibilities of building this further into something users have never experienced ever before.

Roposo is bringing live entertainment to millions of users and live music is a large part of that - be it crafting our unique music IPs with live shows comprising some of the country’s leading artists and labels with diverse music or being the live entertainment partner of events ingrained in pop culture that appeal to music enthusiasts. The music artist can interact live with users as they answer polls, send in song requests, comment, send reactions, gift stickers and so much more.

Roposo JamRoom, in association with Bollywood’s renowned composer and lyricist Pritam's Jam 8 and Sony Music brings to the audience 10 new songs by 19 celebrated singers from different genres including Sonu Nigam, Mohit Chauhan, Shaan, Mame Khan, Asees Kaur, Shalmali Kholgade, Shilpa Rao and others across 10 weeks. On World Music Day, we launched a brand-new IP Roposo MIC which is India’s first livestream singing competition where audiences decide the winner on the spot through polls across different rounds. Apart from these, we have built properties like StarTrack, Roposo Gig and Indie Rhythm to present music talent – music artists, singers and bands live on Roposo, where they can interact and engage with their audience directly. To date, we have had leading music artists like Harrdy Sandhu, Ash King, Akriti Kakar, Sona Mohapatra as well as popular bands like Euphoria and The Yellow Diary on the platform for live shows. Artists like Ed Sheeran and Coldplay have also associated with Roposo in the past for their song promotions.

Beyond our IPs we have different live show performances that we believe the audience would love to be a part of live. Recently we had the 3-day virtual Glance Live Fest event that included a live show by singer Jasleen Royal where she sang her popular songs, those requested live by fans and interacted with them answering candid revelations about her struggles - it was watched by 360,000 users! We also had live streams of DJ sets from the clubs of Goa that gave millions of users a unique way to bring the Goan party scene home. DJ Saj Akhtar performed his set to 551,000 users, DJ OJO played to a virtual audience of 677,000 while DJ Harsha took over the dance floor with 405,000 users tuning in.

Roposo is making music shows, concerts and events more accessible to people live from the comfort of their homes on their Glance lock screen and Roposo app as we collaborate with such music entities. We have associated with Musicathon, a music festival that takes place in Bir, Himachal Pradesh for last 2 seasons. We also created a high-quality music show Micdrop with Musicathon for 2 days with 7 musicians creating the feel of live concert post Musicathon. We also recently collaborated with The Battle of Beatboxers by Rawdust, The Great Indian Sneaker festival and Anurag Vashisht's new album preview as their live entertainment partners. This gives access to the live performances with popular artists. Apart from the offline music events, these creators also get opportunities to come on live shows on Roposo and Glance reaching millions of users. It helps these music artists to be discovered by a wider audience, collaborate with fellow artists, and increase their fan base.

Our aim is to unite the community of music lovers and help them experience diverse genres of music while simultaneously interacting with their favourite artists on the platform. Our efforts are also to identify different genres, artists, and subcultures that will help niche music segments explore new avenues. In all of this, talent comes first. We even have creators from the LGBTQIA+ community headlining some of our live shows honouring pride.

In fact, over the past few months, we have even partnered with numerous music labels enabling our creators to use music from various genres such as Bollywood, independent music, indie pop, and hip-hop, amongst others.

How is associating with Roposo benefiting the music creators and how are they incentivized on the platform?

We are committed to our creator community – we engage with and incentivize them in different ways. Firstly, as a platform we provide our creators with a significant, combined reach of over millions of users across Roposo and Glance, so our creators get to showcase their talent in real-time to a large audience.

We also invest in training and grooming our creators both on the live entertainment and commerce front from the best in the business, including some global players. Apart from this we recently ran the School of Live training program together with Big Bang Studio.

Currently the primary way of monetization for our live entertainment streamers is a direct payout for their live shows along with exposure to a significant viewer base. Of course, a bonus is that they get to collaborate with celebrities on live shows at times, which works as a great gratification for many of our creators. Going forward, we expect digital commerce and gifting will be enabled. Audiences will potentially be able to gift their favourite artists medals, coins, etc. Music creators will also have opportunities to monetise their expertise by conducting paid masterclasses, and through ticketed live shows such as music concerts as well.

Roposo recently also celebrated World Music Day with a special event - Music All Day LIVE. Tell us how it was conceptualized and the key highlights of the one-day virtual event?

Roposo is a popular destination for pop culture and with music being a major part of it, we wanted to celebrate the musical diversity of our country on World Music Day. We conceptualized the format of MAD (Music All Day) LIVE which has music shows for 24 hours non-stop of which the majority was live! Roposo has always given singers and musicians a platform to launch their albums, but the aim of this special World Music Day event was to bring the community of musicians and music lovers from all over, together in a 24-hour, non-stop, live music celebration.

We had mesmerizing performances by more than 30 artists performing live with 11 unique live music shows, and the viewers experienced a day full of live music streaming that covered DJ sets, morning ragas, LoFi music, classical music as well as interviews with singers, musicians and songwriters. Roposo also paid tribute to late legendary singers we lost this year, including Lata Mangeshkar, Bappi Lahiri, KK and Sidhu Moose Wala.

With something for every music lover, over 3.5 million viewers tuned in to enjoy the celebration. With many several such special live musical show formats in the pipeline, we believe the party has just started. We hope this will truly innovate how music is both created and consumed in India.