Social media is seductive because of its easy point of entry and low-cost basis and one of the major factors in establishing a business online. But a lot of businesses fail to utilize it due to lack of knowledge, time and effort are required to create a successful campaign. Large corporations can dump money into huge advertising campaigns whenever they want, but it’s the bit players — the emerging startups and small businesses of the world — that can really take their campaigns to the next level.
To help these small businesses and startups to reach to potential customers online, Rohit Awasthi started Solomofy. I got a chance to interact with him to understand the current scenario of social media marketing and how it affects these businesses.
Q. Hi Rohit, before starting can you please introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m Rohit, co-founder of Solomofy. I’m a NIT 2003 batch graduate and started my career with Patni Computers. In 2005 I joined PaGalGuy.com as its very first employee, and since then I have worked with Snapdeal, and Hoppr(now Hike) in social media, product management and marketing.
I started Solomofy with my co-founder, Rupesh, who is a seasoned professional with 12 years of experience in Sales and Business Development. He has worked with the likes of Just Dial, Rediff and Snapdeal to name a few.
We are now a team of 60 people working in different vertical of social media engagement for small business across India.
Q. What Solomofy is all about?
Solomofy is a very concise and easy to use technology platform to manage all social media needs of a business. Once a user logs in, he/she can send requests for creation of posts, give approval/denial, check out all the published & unpublished posts in the library and access analytics through the platform itself. A notification is sent whenever something important needs to be reviewed. The user can also plan the content according to upcoming events & festivities which are already mapped out on Solomofy.
Q. What motivated you to join the entrepreneurship?
Major part of my career was spent working with startups. With limited resources, time and capital, small businesses are never really able to utilize social media to the best of their advantage, and due to this the business takes a hit and opportunity to build a brand is lost. It is a vicious cycle that repeats itself every now and then. I saw an enormous opportunity in breaking this cycle and that is what motivated me to take a leap into the world of entrepreneurship.
Q. Why do you think neglecting social can be a drawback for businesses?
In this era of technology, social media plays a major role in influencing customers for each and every brand. Some brands have established themselves only through social media channels. Hence, neglecting social media can be a big drawback for businesses in terms of customer acquisition as well as revenue.
A majority of small businesses are completely oblivion to the power of it and how it can change the dynamics of their business. Solomofy is helping small businesses put all these issues to rest.
Q. What is your mission with Solomofy?
There are around 40 million small and medium scale businesses in India, out of which, around 500,000 have their presence online. Also, most of the small businesses that are online, by and large are not maximizing the benefit of their online presence.
I believe that the success for any business and more so for small businesses requires more than just tools and technology. It is about time that SME’s re-imagine business with a social mindset. Even in today’s highly digitalized world, many small Indian businesses underestimate the potential of social business, considering it a passing marketing fad. So, our mission is to get them online and to leverage the social media platforms to increases the efficacy of their business, thus strengthening their belief in the power of social media marketing.
Q. Social Media Marketing niche is already saturated. What made you think it’ll be a good decision to step into such market?
Though there are number of players in this niche but the market is huge enough to accommodate more numbers providing quality and affordable services. After having countless meetings with small businesses, restaurant owners, individuals, professionals, marketplace sellers, which are considered not so cool, we realized that they were constrained by-
- Decreasing efficacy of traditional media – Prints, Pamphlets, and Hoardings etc
- Little or no knowledge of social media
- Dearth of time
- No one to tell their stories on a regular basis, interestingly, and without interrupting them
- Lastly, no good social marketing agency wants to work on small budgetsWe figured out the problem, and realized the immense opportunity of helping lakhs of SME’s, and the only way we could help these businesses was by minimizing the cost of client servicing, and building a technology platform that will help them in meeting their requirements effectively, all at the click of a button.
And, that is how, Solomofy came into being.
What makes Solomofy stand apart from any other solution present in the market is affordability without compromising on quality. Our world class packages start as low as Rs 14,999/- only. The affordability coupled with a team having an intricate knowledge about social media marketing makes our offerings one of its kind.
Q. What are the current stats and future goals?
In last one year we have worked with more than 200 small businesses and our focus has been on automating most of the processes and workflows to build a robust platform. We are geared up for our next leap and aim to Solomofy 10,000 small businesses in next 2 years!
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