India's Instamojo aims to simplify process of selling digital files
Whether you're an artist, a software creator, a freelancer in the digital space, startup Instamojo's Web app simplifies the mechanics for buying and selling your files so you can focus on creating content.
You could be a really great designer who creates amazing logos, Web templates, themes or even sites; a photographer who has totally amazing photos that are not available anywhere out there; a musician with amazing compositions; a freelance software programmer who wants to sell software; or you might want to sell tickets for an event you are hosting.
That's where this product Instamojo comes into picture. Instamojo is essentially a Web app that simpliflies the process of buying and selling digital files. The easiest way to sell stuff would be by just sharing or pasting a link.
They also have an innovative hassle-free payment checkout system. One where you don't have to worry about hosting, bandwidth, payment processing, security or anything of that sort. Essentially it allows you to focus on creating art rather than worry about selling it. Instamojo pays the seller 90 percent of every successful transaction.
Sampad Swain, co-founder, Instamojo.
Co-founder Sampad Swain shares the story behind Instamojo and where it is headed now.
What was the inspiration behind Instamojo?
It all started in late 2010 when I started a newsletter comprising video interviews as a side project. Later I wanted to monetize the newsletter but couldn't as there wasn't an easy, hassle-free solution which just worked. Soon I realized that the problem was much deeper and more so, the prevalent solutions for selling stuff online were really painful & had too much friction. So this problem which concerned all of us, finally led us to present day. Instamojo where we are striving to simplify online commerce with focus on design, delivery and distribution. Instamojo was started as a side project but now it has taken a life of its own. And the best part is we are just getting started. Our name strikingly mirrors what we stand for-- Insta (instant) + mojo (magic) for online commerce.
What differentiates your product from the rest?
Our geographic focus along with vertical-wise approach towards a particular use-case is what's differentiating us from the crowd. We want to go deep into simplifying each commerce vertical than take the entire commerce as a whole.
Any specific markets you want to target? Who are your current users?
Right now our focus is primarily the Indian market with well over 5,000 sellers. However, we are seeing growing interest from other markets as well.
How do you integrate feedback from users into your product?
We keep on getting amazing and invaluable feedback from our users and we keep on implementing it every now and then. For example, one of our users, Deepak Shenoy, who was selling research reports via Instamojo gave feedback that it would be easier for him if they could get a list of all the buyers on their seller dashboard and we got that implemented in a jiffy. We always keep a tab on them which we later either build them straight away or consider during feature roll-out.
How is Instamojo doing in terms of tracion and overall insights on the kind of goods sold on the app.
We have little more than 5,000 sellers on our platform. Folks have used Instamojo to sell various kind of stuff. Noted amongst them would be publishers using Instamojo to sell e-books, comic strips, research reports, event tickets and etc. Software companies use Instamojo's core delivery platform to sell & deliver their software to their client's end and lastly some use it to raise donations.
Tell us a bit about your team.
Our team consists of folks with strong background in engineering, design and management. Part of the core team are Aditya Sengupta (@Sengupta), Akash Gehani (@rockball13), Harshad Sharma (@hiway) and Sampad Swain (@Sampad). We are looking to expand our team now. So if you're interested to know what we are upto, then do visit our careers page to find out more.
Instamojo was funded by incubator 500 Startups along with some other investors as listed on Angel.co. Certainly a team of youngsters who are making quite a significant impact to make things better for these artists of the newer generation--ones who want to create art and to monetize it instantly.
There is still a long way to go for this startup, but certainly it has made some waves within the startup community in India and also has reached out to the Silicon Valley, something they must be quite proud of.
