MyEra, A company revolutionizing the marketing landscape with AI-powered assistance
- ByStartupStory | November 18, 2022
“Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.”
This quote by Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics holds true for the team of MyEra. Their journey stands as an inspiring example for aspiring and young entrepreneurs out there.
From building cars and participating in intense engineering projects to stepping into the marketing domain, Anirudh Sharma, CEO and co-founder of MyEra, and his team have experienced a memorable entrepreneurial journey. Even though their paths were not paved with roses, with their hard work and will to learn, they created not one but two startups. MyEra, previously known as Era, originated under his former venture QuarkMe. Starting out as an R&D project, MyEra, in 2021, became an independent company.
The journey and inception
By his final year of engineering, he sought experiences beyond the field of engineering. Observing how the Indian startup ecosystem was rising, and startups like Ola and Uber gaining momentum, Anirudh and his team decided to give their idea a definite structure and that is when he launched his first company QuarkMe. They began in the education domain and after some experimentation and a few pivots, they finally entered the offline marketing domain in 2018. They successfully added Swiggy to their clientele, offering marketing services for the company. 2019 proved to be a profitable year for QuarkMe financially as they were able to break even and establish a market presence. They designed and executed multiple campaigns for big brands like Swiggy, Dunzo, etc. However, with the advent of Covid 19 in 2020, the scenario changed. The lives of people, as we all know, altered into an online mode of conduct. Every industry had to rely on a virtual mode of working. All the companies had to go through an existential crisis, a fight for survival. QuarkMe was not exempted from the effects. From being a successful business to experiencing no revenue for six months was a harsh time for the company. In an effort to strive in this challenging time and stay relevant in the changing world, they decided to diversify and move into the arena of Social Media Marketing. Since offline campaigns could no longer be executed, they started offering social media marketing services to relatively smaller brands. As a result of this shift, they confronted the challenges of the system and the inefficiencies that existed. Along with their entrepreneurial drive and accumulated experience, they discovered an opportunity here. They determined to use technology to resolve these issues at the same time scale. After going through the standard procedure of building non-functional prototypes, testing them with users, and receiving positive feedback, they officially launched MyEra as an independent private limited company in 2021, keeping the same core team and adding a few new members to the family. With this company, they decided to transition from services to products.
What is MyEra?
MyEra is an intelligent marketing assistant that helps Social Media Marketers generate trendy marketing creatives in just a matter of few clicks, without the need for marketing skills. Not only can social media marketers now easily come up with engaging marketing content using MyEra, but they can also distribute and analyze it. The four primary engines include Trendwatch- which provides trending content inspiration; Editor- for generating content inside MyEra itself; Post Scheduler- for posting content to social media handles right away or scheduling for later, and Brand Health Tracker for analysis and tracking metrics.
MyEra’s intention is not to become merely an editing or graphic designing tool that already exists in the market. It focuses on the marketing needs of the clients. MyEra makes Social Media Marketing more accessible to people, and it does not require the users to have design skills for making content. Having closely observed the complete journey they have endeavored to bring the essential features under the same umbrella. Beginning from idea identification, one can generate content, make multiple iterations of the content, schedule content calendar, and analyze. They are also adding an intelligent layer to the already existing features. Using machine learning and artificial intelligence they want to implement a suggestive model which would recommend to the users how to improve their performance on Social Media.
The team has also launched a program titled “MyEra for Startups” inspired by the kingpins of the industry. It is a credit-giveaway program for early-stage startups in which they offer credits worth INR 3,600 to startups. “ This program was inspired by the market leaders. Any software company would want to work with startups as startups grow exponentially. You never know, a small company could be your enterprise-tier client,” said Anirudh Sharma. Not only did MyEra initiate an innovative approach toward Social Media Marketing, but they also have made a remarkable contribution to the startup ecosystem with this initiative.
Industry Overview
By 2026, analysts predict that the worldwide market for social media will be worth around $41 billion. Since MyEra specializes in the Software as a Service sector, the founder Anirudh Sharma confirmed that scaling up will not be a challenge if they can establish a good product market fit. They aspire to have a market share of 2.5 percent which would potentially amount to $1 billion. Both in India and globally, the fundamentals of building a business remain constant, i.e., a good chunk of one’s efforts should be focused on marketing while building your product. Startups, middle and small-scale businesses get overly occupied with the product-building process or day-to-day operations, they miss out to leverage the benefits of marketing. MyEra intends to make it easier for these companies to avail effective marketing techniques.
Since the Indian market is price sensitive and is rapidly evolving due to the widespread availability of technology, many new companies are launching themselves in the country. There is a gap between the companies building products targeted mainly towards India, and those focused on foreign markets. Presently, MyEra is aimed at targeting the Indian market as they are rooted in it. What sets MyEra apart from the rest of the companies in the industry is their ability to supply localized content to the people of the country which for other established firms might not be possible. The Indianized content that the company offers helps them to be uniquely positioned in the market. However, they do not want to limit themselves here. Eventually, the company intends to expand to the international market as well.
Access to information, resources, and the availability of the internet are the key driving factors of the industry. During and in the post-covid world, a huge number of businesses were compelled to shift to the online mode. The evolved market demands that companies provide online services. Companies in the Social Media Marketing sector have attempted to capitalize on this very aspect as most of the marketing is now done online via Social Media. A growing startup community is emerging and opting for a hybrid model. The availability of funds has also boosted the emergence and growth of these companies in the market.
Post-covid scenario
Changing consumer habits toward more frequent online purchases have strengthened the system, and companies have taken advantage of this trend. However, as a result of this change, Indian consumers now have more options than ever, which is keeping startups and other businesses on their toes while also contributing to the growth of the industry.
Due to the lockdown, and the dependency of both service providers and customers on the internet, the previously offline services were forced to move to online mode. Consequently, they shifted to newer and more unconventional ways of marketing. Despite the fact that offering services continues to be a great and cost-effective way to start a brand and generate revenue, the pandemic has been a lesson for Anirudh and his team to not completely rely on it and build a product-based company.
Despite all the negative impacts of Covid on the economy, for certain sectors, it was a blessing in disguise. Due to this massive shift towards online mode, companies can now compete on a worldwide scale which could not occur in the same intensity in the pre-covid era. In that sense, Covid helped the industry grow and prosper as well as bring the world closer.
Government’s role in the challenging times
During this transition phase, a lot of recalibration has taken place across the globe, with the government’s focus readjusted. There have been new markets opening up booming with opportunities. The government and startups are co-dependent on each other, as the government requires the companies to grow so that they can generate employment, and the startups need the backing of the government to develop. The government incubation centers for startups have brought like-minded people into the same space, and as a result, peer-to-peer learning takes place. This has benefited the startup community in general. The Rajasthan government’s initiative of providing covid assistance where individuals invest early capital into startups via various mechanisms has helped early-stage startups survive as well as grow. The covid environment was unquestionably a catalyst for the change in which the government and stakeholders stepped up wanting this startup to survive, which did not occur earlier.
Future aspirations
The company has a very well-laid-out plan for the coming years. Anirudh Sharma informed the Startup story team that they should have a viable product-market fit, especially for India, by next year. He said, “ A refined product market fit would be a requirement for an early-stage startup. Sitting and revisiting the particular aspect of things every six months is necessary for the early stages.” They also plan to experiment in other domains in the coming years. By the third year, MyEra wants to penetrate the international markets. They plan to conduct preliminary worldwide testing, with the United States and Europe serving as primary sites.
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