[Announcement] I am stoked to announce that Airblack has raised INR 33 crores led by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (
@DellFdn
), with participation from Elevation Capital (
@ElevCap
), Info Edge Ventures (
@InfoEdgeVC
), Blume Ventures Founders Fund (
@BlumeVentures
), and angels,
Excited to share that
@clubairblack
has raised USD 5.2M Series A co-led by
@InfoEdgeVC
,
@ElevCap
, and a bunch of dream supporters to help us accelerate our mission of empowering millions of microentrepreneurs and creators.
So many people on the feed changing their names to their personal websites post
@balajis
tweet earlier last month.
About time: this is just the beginning of a massive trend across social networks.
And it all adds up.
Fellow founders: if you have raised your Series A or about to, just get a senior finance resource onboard who is great at business thinking, and can take strong independent stand at strategic level.
We did this, and has been one of the best decisions in last 12 mo.
🎯 Milestone Alert!
Five months after the launch of Airblack Beauty Club, today we enrolled the 1000th student in our 2-month live Makeup Artist program. We are now at 10X of our pre-COVID revenue.
2020 has been one hell of a year. Thread 👇 (1/n)
Today,
@clubairblack
hit 200K followers on Instagram!
This one's special: we have spent less than Rs. 50K ever on marketing our IG. No one in the team ever ran a professional IG account before.
Our journey 👇
👋 Product designers!
One of the most high-impact design decisions we took when we started up was to be ‘delight-led’.
We transform our learner’s life by teaching them a skill AND making them feel more confident. One without the other is ineffective.
Brief on our process 👇
Over 4,000 people attended over 150+ meetups in 20+ cities with Airblack in the last 1 month.
The hunger in the Indian youth to find an opportunity to succeed, to stand out and to start up is infectious. Countless stories of hustle and passion from Agra to Thane to Ludhiana!
Shoutout to
@kunksed
and
@StoaHQ
for introducing us to
@misspriyanain
!
If you are looking for a marketer with a flair for content and product, Priya is your bet! DM her.
Touched by this heartfelt gesture by
@prashantsachan
and
@AppsForBharat
team! They are right now miles away in Ayodhya, lighting over 35K diyas for 20k+ users of SriMandir app, on demand! 🪔 🙏
Happy Diwali everyone!
Just got access to
@foldmoney_
What a beautiful onboarding! You can tell if a company is design-led by seeing how much detail has gone into deciding onboarding UX. Great to see someone cracking personal finance, finally!
Can’t wait to see what they ship next. Cc
@meakaakka
.
@foldmoney_
is slowly becoming my favorite design-led product from India. I don't remember the last time I waited for features to launch because they sounded life-changing.
“Airblack has given me wings of confidence for my quick startup”
Yet another batch of 200+ newly minted Makeup Artists graduating tomorrow.
No better way to start off the week knowing that there are 200 more people closer to turning their passion into profession!
At this point I am tracking 7 different bank accounts via
@foldmoney_
for various use cases.
Also got a glimpse of their web app and as a design and data geek, it feels nothing short of a delightful experience.
I wonder what makes them special when a lot of other apps allow
Congratulations to my personal favorite VC fund! (I may be a little biased!)
Founders - if you are building a venture in India,
@KhandujaM
@vaasbhaskar
@mukularora
and the entire Elevation Team is the nicest and best in the business! 💯
We’re thrilled to announce Elevation's Fund VIII of $670M & reaffirm our commitment to visionary founders in India. Seed/Series A investing is our ikigai; the perfect intersection of our capabilities, passion & the needs of the founder ecosystem
Appreciation post for
@urbancompany_UC
design - outstanding UI and UX, with an obsessive focus on principles. One of the rare products where the brand and tech speak the same language so consistently across assets.
We just hit 150K followers on Instagram.
Zero spend on follower acquisition. In 15 months of launching, with last 50K coming in 3 months. 2 people team.
What’s working? Daily, consistent, thoughtful and helpful content. And having a team who in love with what they do! (1/2)
Many congratulations
@_vasudha
!
@ElevCap
is lucky to have you.
If I had to rank all VCs I know by niceness, Vasudha will be one of the topmost.
So if you are starting up and want to reach out to someone to hear you out, DM her!
🔥HIRING DEVS AND DESIGNERS / RT
Since past 3 months, we have handled 20x growth in learning hours on
@clubairblack
app
Learners spend 15-18 hours a month learning on the platform on average (~ Netflix)
Product: ‘WhatsApp Groups meet Zoom’
Built at ⚡️ speed by a team of 5
👇
Paytm, a business built from scratch with conviction on Digital India.
From our first app release to becoming a verb in India to operating EBITDA profitability milestone - all in 10 years !
Super Proud of
@Paytm
team. 🤗
Thankful to all who have supported & cheered us along. 🙏🏼
Over 4000 concurrent attendees attending our flagship do-it-together workshop, highest ever
@clubairblack
4000 women in more than 500 cities, getting inspired to launch their own business. Crossed 120K in last 30 days.
Never been so bullish on India!
Meet the Class of 2020!⚡️
We welcome
@clubairblack
to the WebEngage Startup Program!
We look forward to helping you boost your mission of empowering passionate entrepreneurs by helping them do what they love,
@videtj
& team!
Onwards and Upwards!🥂
#GrowWithWebEngage
#Startup
Exactly 12 months back, we graduated our 1st batch of Makeup Artists.
This Saturday,
@clubairblack
is graduating it’s largest batch ever.
But a few things still remind me of day 0 - the infectious energy and love of our members.
Forever long on entrepreneurship in India!
Should there be women-first tech platforms?
Was reading some numbers - 35% of women are online in India, that’s about ~140M women users. In couple of years, this is expected to be 45% share, that’s ~290M women online, equal to overall India Internet Market in 2016 (1/n)
Good creators are more aware now and many have started knowing their real worth.
Users are lost in the swarm of great, good and garbage content.
So much so, that they will pay for structured content if it moves a needle in their life.
Checked out
@JoinCooby
after
@_surgeahead
announcement yesterday. Game changing plugin! Totally transformed WhatsApp for me.
The minute details in the product to make it seamless for work is commendable 👏
Delighted to see our Partners
@Mukularora
,
@khandujam
& Mridul Arora in the
@FortuneIndia
#40Under40
list 2021. They exemplify our vision of collaborating with extraordinary founders from Day One. Congratulations to all three of them! Onwards and upwards!
Almost every social network that is ad-driven is a media company, today or in the future.
That means a lot of creators and users are not going to ‘like’ it, eventually.
It presents a whole new world of possibilities on how we will consume content online
When it comes to learning a practical skill, confidence is as important as knowledge.
Every month, thousands of women at
@clubairblack
start their journey as entrepreneurs.
Every month, we iterate basis what they feel and say about us.
Little things compound.
Thanks a ton for the words
@manas_saloi
; nothing as affirming coming from you - you have an indirect impact on our product culture like no one else!
PS: I will keep pitching you to join us every year like the last 2 years 😁
Shoutout to my incredible product designer and colleague Shibin (
@aisehisexy
) who is looking to apply to new roles.
He comes with extreme love for his work, eye to detail, immense curiosity and taste. DM him directly if you are hiring for your Design team! He will be an asset.
A long time vendor from my first startup, with whom we had a great relationship for over 4 years.
This was in college.
Still call him ‘sir’ because he taught me more about business than most people.
This morning he texted me, after years, to check in.
Made my day.
Creators in an ad-driven social network eventually end up serving the ‘advertiser’. The platform rewards you for ‘reach’.
One would assume that the content that has most reach is generally high quality, but that’s mostly not the case at scale.
But more 'reach' is dopamine.
Against common misconception, the role transcends way more than just accounting and internal audit.
Out of all benefits, the best one is - you get to sleep peacefully at night.
DM me if you need help with the JD / who to hire / what will they do. Happy to help!
Last Saturday, over 650 women graduated from Airblack in our largest graduation, ever. We had representation from 272 cities in India.
Most have already launched salons, freelance services, content gigs, and more.
Right before we
@clubairblack
completes 3 years this month!
2021 at Airblack: we shipped a lot, we learned a lot, we grew from a 30 member team to a 150 member team, 10xed in revenue, but above all - made a lot of memories!
2022: take bigger, bolder, and more ambitious bets, for you are as good as you dream to be!
What they call ‘Karma’ is actually the long-term network effects of being nice and just to others, irrespective of what you get in return
#WeekendMusings
#BeNice
Musings: you are unstoppable (and privileged) if you get to do more of what you love every single day.
And the only thing that can limit you is your imagination.
Note to self: never stop thinking big.
Calling all content and social networking entrepreneurs! Join us for “SAIF Jamghat” on Wednesday, 1st August.
@frdahsan
@alokg
@KhandujaM
will be talking about early days of
@sharechatapp
, growth hacks, key metrics to track etc.
Register for invite here:
Airblack app crashed for the first time today: 2500+ people live in our do-it-together makeup workshop with
@shaanmuofficial
at
@clubairblack
!
What's more special is that these are women from more than 500+ cities with a goal to launch their own makeup business.
#IndiaRising
We are already living in a world where every single person can be a brand/business, if they have the right tools and access.
Every person can be a media business, an educational institute, a concert company, an academy and what not..
"At the same time, a large part of India has been built on the back of ‘small ideas’ or ‘small gigs’. We wanted to do something that can help accelerate the lives of millions of people who want to dream big by starting small"
@clubairblack
The
@WebEngage
Startup Program portfolio 😍
If you are a b2c startup, our program is designed to..
1. help you build a growth stack with zero cost
2. up your retention game from day1
3. set up metrics/dashboards that truly matter
Learn more & apply here:
Excited to share that we have raised $502mn at $2.1bn valuation from Tiger Global, Lightspeed, Snap, Twitter and others
This capital will help us accelerate our journey of building India's largest AI-powered content ecosystem.
Read more about journey -
2) Large subscription driven businesses who will bring together a collection of creators and solve an indispensable need/goal
Expect paying a huge premium to creators for staying. Maybe 'CSOPs'
@unacademy
@gauravmunjal
have set benchmarks here globally from India 🙏
Congratulations
@ElevCap
on the raise and such a cool rebrand!
Journey of a founder is insanely tough. Having a great partner who has your back and gets ‘long term thinking’ does make it a bit easier.
Been a priviledge to have Elevation Capital with us at
@clubairblack
A young founder reached out last year and said "Quite sad that even though India tech ecosystem is almost 15 yrs old, we still have to rely on learning from US founders on Twitter because Indian founders rarely share".
So true and thats when I picked up tweeting regularly.
In it's current state, education as a product is a long-term lottery ticket, where top 5% get the outcomes.
As
@paraschopra
points out, we are sitting on a ticking time bomb.
The problems of our country will not get solved by 'fixing education' in the current state.
The rioting of youth in the current Agniveer situation is perhaps a trailer of things to come.
Unemployment in India is a ticking time bomb.
With rise of tech and automation, where would the jobs for tens of millions of Indian youth come from?
Still trying to understand why so many younger folks obsessed with learning French / Spanish / German as a third language. If I were of their age with that much free time, I would totally go for Mandarin!
#JustTechThings
‘More reach’ allows an ad agency sitting in a corner in the world to sell ‘reach’ to CMOs. KRAs get met.
Agencies pay creators. Everyone is happy.
Until time passes, and you have to let go of what you love to create what will work on the network.
How is your weekend going?
Here
@clubairblack
:
100+ learners doing magic with their brushes..
..in fun, live and engaging do-it-together workshops that ACTUALLY focus on making you learn!
Such a delight to see happy faces! 👇
3 kms away. ETA is 10 mins. You finished 2 long reads and realised you haven’t moved an inch! You check GMaps - ETA shot up by 15 more mins! Your walk time and drive time are starting to converge, but not close enough to nudge you to walk. Then you tweet..
#JustBangaloreThings
Platforms in (2) and (3) will create more entrepreneurs in the internet economy in the next decade than anything else that we have ever seen.
Musings that keep us awake at night
@clubairblack
!
Future founders on my TL -
@7rahulc
is one of the nicest and most empathetic founders I have met, and he just turned a VC! Go DM him if you are starting up.
All the best Rahul!
@matrixindiavc
is lucky to have you 💯
Let's see what this VC thing is all about then. Excited to be joining the team at Matrix Partners. Hoping to be the kind of investor I've respected as a founder - Honest, Empathetic and All-in.
Thanks Avnish, Rajat, Rajinder, Tarun, Vikram and team
@matrixindiavc
for having me.
Trust is the ultimate currency. Can be influenced by words, but governed only by your actions in the long term.
How do you act when no one is watching? How many people trust you? And to what extent? Tough to put a metric to it.
I think about this a lot.
.
@smallpdf
should be one of the most underrated software services in the world. Been a user since a decade, magical experience everytime.
Haven’t found a better PDF compression technology with the same UX yet.
So
@elonmusk
- Is a power user of his product
- Is absolutely enjoying the process
- Works with people on ground
- Takes fast decisions
- Built iconic companies
- Is an engineer at heart
Rare at Twitter’s scale to find the perfect founder again. Extremely long on
@Twitter
Timeless thread from 5 years back, everything still holds true.
One thing has changed for me: It feels nice to be not outside the ring anymore.
People want a livelihood, not years of education and hope for a job that doesn’t exist.
Sometimes I think my life is so much easier because I have amazing cofounders 😇
@PulkitPujara
@whovaibhavraj
Understatement, but couldn’t have survived (and thrived) 2020 alone!
Back home in India, it’s only a matter of time when this becomes a new normal to employment - we have the world’s largest, immensely talented and hard-working youth population, hungry to take over the world.
.
@KhandujaM
sharing a few insights on building for the vernacular user-base. “Above all, focus on original created content and community”
#Jamghat
@SAIFPartners
“Don’t make availability of funds as your primary ability. Keep growth hacking and insight gathering as your primary ability. Funding is extra fuel.”
@frdahsan
#Jamghat
@SAIFPartners
India employment in numbers; stats that will blow your mind.
And why becoming ‘Atmanirbhar’ (becoming self-sustaining) is our only way out in the long term.
Thread ->
The future of how users consume anything online will likely have
1) Large ad-driven media companies that will become huge freemium offerings technically.
Most creators will use these to market their premium offerings.
Think
@Facebook
@YouTube
@instagram
@Twitter
My favorite type of ideas are ones that look so 'non-obvious' opportunities when they start, address a strong user pain point through a feature, build massive distribution and then start emerging as platforms.
@discordapp
sits on top of that list!
Our social media team is trying to make twitter cooler
🙏 Follow
@clubairblack
if you want to learn about a whole new class of entrepreneurs coming online and ‘shaking the world’ by doing more of what they love
#GandhiJayanti
#ShamelessSelfPromotion
"In a gentle way, you can shake the world"
Airblack Beauty Club wishes you all a very Happy Gandhi Jayanti! Remember to do more of what you love because in a gentle way, you can change the world!
We scaled 16x in ops in last 12 mo, whereas our operations team grew from 4 people to 6 people.
Magic is our solid engineering team, focused on tech-based scaling.
Here is a chance to join our iOS pod and work with an extremely passionate and lean team. DM
@whovaibhavraj
#TechHiring
Looking for iOS and full-stack developers to join us as we build the future of micro-entrepreneurship.
If you are crazy about building outcome-based learning products
@Airblack
is the place to be 🚀
RT for Karma, DM to chat :)
@asxna
@paraschopra
Close to 60-90M people will enter the workforce in the next 5-7 years (add on top of already unemployed workers)
Cumulative formal jobs in the most optimistic case (at current pace) is less than 6-8M in the same time period.
So yeah, ticking time bomb indeed.
You will get to join this dream team, which continues to redefine benchmarks of resilience, persistence, and creativity every single day! 🚀
Check open roles here:
Seasons will come and seasons will go. Like opinions of people.
But we are here to enjoy the walk and dance in the storm.
The turf may change, and so will seasons. But we will always remain - unstoppable!
In the words of Muhammad Ali - “Fighting to the last breath, rising again and again, resisting is not easy, believing in oneself is not easy , fighting for who we are is not easy. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
FB has ~100M DAU in India and Instagram has ~40M DAU. This implies a $6.5-7 / dau for a FB India user and $2/dau for an instagram India user, as per below data from
@factordaily
article.
Too high or too low? cc
@ishaanpreet
India is the 2nd largest freelancing population and youngest working population in the world, and we are pumped to build for the 100M+ people who will launch their careers on the internet in the next decade.
“Education 3.0 created companies that were designed to replicate the social experience of college, a book club, or group class online.
Part of the fun of learning a new skill is the social aspect, which is lost on 99% of edtech startups”
@gregisenberg
Also super grateful to our existing investors
@KhandujaM
and
@vaasbhaskar
(
@ElevCap
) who have had conviction on our journey from day 1, and are doubling down on us.
@whovaibhavraj
and I are privileged to have you as long-term partners!