Flagship product GoSocial aimed at rewarding users
Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group, has come on board as a key investor at Hapramp. Hapramp is an Indian start-up working on the biggest social media challenges: user privacy, data security, and fair content monetization. It was founded in 2018 by five students in the final year of their computer science graduate degree.
Anand Mahindra is investing USD 1 million in the Gurgaon based startup. He had, in 2018, announced via Twitter a funding opportunity for an Indian social media start-up that met certain criteria. Hapramp, which had just come into existence, grabbed the opportunity to apply. Mahindra tweeted that Team Hapramp had won the seed funding today.
“Took 2 Years but I finally found the start-up I was looking for”, Anand Mahindra said in his tweet. He called out Hapramp’s flagship offering GoSocial, saying “Look out for their social networking platform”. GoSocial is a social media platform that rewards artists and creators as they post and engage with the community. 50 thousand users have already downloaded the GoSocial app from the Google Play Store, before it has been formally launched. The app will soon be available on Apple App Store; and the company has plans to expand marketing to South East Asia in the coming year.
Anand Mahindra had asked digital transformation expert and ex-Mahindra executive, Jaspreet Bindra, to work with him to find a next-gen Indian social network start-up, which would reward creators, protect personal data and be built on next generation technologies like Blockchain.
Commenting on the investment, Bindra said, “The Hapramp team is building a Web 3.0 social network. It is built on emerging digital technologies, has a solid business model which rewards content creators, protects personal data, and best of all, is built here locally in India. Jaspreet has signed on as Executive Advisor and Mentor to the Hapramp founding team.
Hapramp has been incubated through its early days by Huddle, a leading sector-agnostic incubator, based in Gurugram, India, on a mission to discover and support entrepreneurs. Huddle has also invested in Hapramp.
“Since inception, the Hapramp team has worked with speed, frugality and a larger vision of enhancing lives, through the simplicity of an app that holds a true value of rewards on the go, with a large notion of educating and entertaining their users. Working with them, as an incubator, and investing in their growth, was one of the easiest decisions for us,” said Sanil Sachar, founding partner, Huddle.
Hapramp sees itself as an idea lab working on the ideas that emerge from the confluence of the creative industry and information economy. In addition to its flagship social networking solution GoSocial, 1Ramp.io, a rewarding social media platform powered by Steem Blockchain; and Asteria Protocol, which is being worked on and will be a new standard for platforms to privately and securely treat public data. These two are work in progress, and Hapramp expects to take them to market in the coming year.
Speaking about the investment on behalf of Hapramp, Shubhendra Vikram, CEO and one of the founders of the start-up said, “We are honored. And so, so excited! This is a massive approval of our mission to give creators the right to their content. The fact that this comes from Mr. Anand Mahindra, someone who we admire and who has always supported creators, gives us confidence. We have big plans, and we intend to stick to our belief of empowering creators and building an ecosystem where they can learn, compete, and win rewards.”