MYn is a made-in-India, made for the world application, aiming to reimagine the social media landscape. Consumers can now discover, create, connect and communicate on a secure end-to-end encrypted system. Further, the app commits to creating a no advertisement environment reinvigorating the social media experience with irrelevant interruption.
Launched in Aug 2021, MYn is currently focused on increasing its presence and user base in India. MYn is rolling out a number of initiatives aimed at creating exclusive experiences for content creators and users of the app. It has collaborated with Bhoomi – A Salim-Sulaiman Music Movement. Exclusive BTS footage and interviews are available only on MYn. They have launched ‘Clash of the Creators’ – an exclusive battle series featuring India’s most popular digital content creators engaging in a fun and fierce battle on unique and quirky topics. There are also advantages for content creators to go live and create channels on MYn – no commissions are charged and all the revenue goes straight to the content creator for all professional engagements.
In conversation with Medianews4u, Abhisyant Anasapurapu, Head of Marketing – Multi-Verse Technologies, spoke about the benefits offered by the platform, revenue model, and more.
On MYn and the benefits offered by the platform to the content creators
Keeping in mind key tenets of user privacy, ensuring no ads and no commissions on any transactions on the app MYn have abstracted the ability of all apps; allowing use-case agnostic discovery, interaction and transaction. This leads to infinite possibilities like social media, commerce, workplace collaboration, payments, personal cloud storage, and the list goes on.
We have built our social media from a purely user-centric view. 1) We have a curated space for creators which is segregated as a feed tab, so that creators that are creating high-quality content, putting great effort into their creations get a curated space that is not saturated. 2) We are very soon launching our D2C monetization model which is very unique, creators can earn from their content directly from the end-user and not from a platform in between. Creators will have the ability to set any price on their content as PPV or set a subscription fee for their channels, which users have to pay to consume. Best part? There are no commissions charged by MYn. For the first time in history, creators will retain 100% of their content-earned revenue and value. 3) We have our TV apps on Android TV, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire Stick so far. This is very exciting for us and the creators. For a creator, we believe that the BIGscreen is the Holy Grail. If they have created content that acts as large screen-based home entertainment, then they have created something compelling. For every piece of OTT content that is put up on today’s platforms, some 1000s don’t cut but are merit-full. We have created our TV app to create an avenue like never before to have a TV presence for their content that they can monetize if they choose to!
We are enabling content creators with MYn studios. We spoke to a few of the content creators who came to the launch of our app and realized that what they needed most was a space where they could create high-quality content. MYn is all about good-quality content and so, we just knew that this was the right thing to do. After all, we wanted to empower content creators from the start! We have our MYn studios in 5 cities: Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, and Pune. Content creators (only those who have channels on our app) can book any studio for unlimited days in a month, they can book a daily 2-hour slot, and book without paying any rental fee.
On the revenue model of MYn
One of our mission statements from the start has been, “Create a profitable social media without selling user data” for most, if not all. Companies in this space feel like this is an impossible feat. But we are here to prove them wrong. We have a service-based revenue model: Rs 99 per month for a channel on MYn (coming soon), Rs 99 per month for any storefront on live local (coming soon) (our proximity commerce feature), and Rs 99 per employee per month on MYwork (coming soon) (our internal communication and collaboration suite, a feature of the product offered to enterprises).
On association with Indian music composer duo Salim and Sulaiman Merchant and the marketing objective behind the association
We have always wanted to empower the creators and artists of the world. What we have created for creators is a way for them to express their talent and extract the entire value from it as it is them who deserve to keep it all. We got associated with Bhoomi 2021 as it is an independent album from an independent label ‘Merchant Records.’ It is independent of movies. It is only about the music, its merit and the artists behind it.
We want to promote and support creators-those making original content- in our country and the world. It is a very beneficial association for us, as the album features top artists of our country today: Salim-Sulaiman, Raftaar, Sunidhi Chauhan, Vishal Dadlani, Harshdeep Kaur, Arivu, Sukhwinder Singh, and many more highly talented and inspiring artists. This music reaches millions. Our brand gets a great spread, nationwide especially, because the album has regional songs. Kasiyoli is an Assamese song. There is a Tamil song as well, along with English, Punjabi, and Hindi of course.
On other creative initiatives
‘Clash of the Creators’ is an exclusive series featuring India’s most popular digital content creators engaging in a fun and fierce battle on unique and quirky topics. Each battle focuses on a particular genre, like food, fashion, comedy, etc., with engaging and relatable content for audiences. ‘Clash of the Creators’ is a signature IP of MYn developed to provide audiences with interesting and appealing content.
The first battle saw creators Manish Bhatia (MB’s Mancave) and Sanjay Ghosh (Cocktails India) flaunt their bartending skills. Sanjay created a Punjab culture-infused cocktail, UdtaGabru, while Manish crafted a Kolkata culture-infused cocktail, Bapok Old Fashioned. The tandoori flavoured UdtaGabru was crafted with Charcoal, Cinnamon Stick, Whiskey 100 pipers, Pineapple Juice, Lime Juice, Lime Wedge, Ice and Soda, while, Bapok Old Fashioned flaunted the flavour of Bourbon Whiskey, with Rosogolla, Paan Leaves, Areca Nut (Supaari), MeethiSupaari with dash of Angostura Bitters.
In the second battle, users can see Simran Dhingra, a Fashion & Lifestyle Blogger (Simran Dhingra), and Keerthi Gehlot, a Fashion, Lifestyle and Travel Blogger (Flashes of My Poise) creating signature looks for the MET Gala if it were to take place in India.
In the third battle, users can see AarizSaiyed (Aariz) and Neeraj Beniwal (Neeraj Beniwal) taking the internet by storm with their comedy skills. AarizSaiyed and Neeraj Beniwal performed a hilarious sketch on dating a fashion influencer. All MYn users can follow the channel and vote for their favorite contender.
Since we stand for good-quality content, we wanted to do something out of the ordinary to engage users on the app. We decided to host The White Wall Film Festival as we wanted to do something that would not only grab the attention of our users but also encourage and empower short-film makers who otherwise struggle to be seen and find an audience. We received 100+ entries. 30 short films have been shortlisted. They are under review currently.
On competitors and the factors that differentiate MYn different from other players?
WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook (Meta family), Snapchat, Ola, Uber, Zomato, Swiggy, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Google Drive, Moj, Josh, Telegram, Signal, Koo, Netflix, Hotstar, Amazon Prime, Voot, Zee5, MX TakaTak, ShareChat, PhonePe are some of our competitors.
This is just an indicative list.
We are India’s 1st Super App (a unified app) that offers complete privacy, has no ads, does not levy any commission, and has a revenue model that’s not dependent on user information. We will soon charge content creators Rs 99 per month (for their channel on MYworld), traders a listing fee of Rs 99 on MYworld and enterprises Rs 99 per employee per month (for their Work persona on MYwork). This is how we’re fundamentally different from others. We’ve also innovated at the feature level. We have a dedicated space for channels (for content creators), live local (for traders), users and for personas-Public (MYworld), Personal (MYown), and Work (MYwork) on the app. One can explore interest-based social media and shop locally on MYworld. Stay in touch with your friends and family, store and share memories on MYown. Communicate and collaborate across teams, store and share files on MYwork. One can also avail MYn’s potentially infinite cloud storage options on MYown and MYwork. Users can earn free storage through our referral scheme.
On the evolving needs of consumers from social media applications – privacy, no ads, differentiation between work and personal profiles, all on one app etc
3000+ apps are uploaded to only the Google Play Store every day. Most of them are free to use which means more often than not they work on user data monetization to sustain as a business. There is also a high frequency of ads today on apps. We believe that there is a shift in consumer needs that is happening as we speak. We believe that since GDPR and growing awareness of data privacy, people have started to feel conscious of that fact as to how much is known about their private data and how it’s being accessed, we see that people are willing to try alternatives that offer privacy, we have seen that with the rapid adoption of apps like Signal, Telegram etc. Unification works and helps, with a growing number of apps, cross-platform management and using 100s of apps has become taxing for users and people love using apps that are unified with multiple use-cases wrapped into one. Apps like WeChat in China and Gojek in Indonesia are some examples of success with users along this line. Ads are everywhere and more, it’s no secret that the sheer number of ad spaces and frequency of ads are too high and most people dislike it with a passion, people pay for ad-free content in freemium-based apps, hence they feel the need to have an ad-free experience.
On hopes for 2022
We want to solidify our super app by creating many more seamless and integrated user journeys across social media, proximity commerce, workplace collaboration and complete a user’s every day journey on MYn. Right from entertainment, to food, to travel, to payments, to storage, and much more, most of which we have already achieved. Then we want to take this to a few countries other than India and begin our journey there. We aim to reach 100 million users, though it is aspirational. With the vast variety of use-cases we offer, we feel we can impact a very large number of people.
