Swirl signs strategic partnership with Whoppl to power influencer livestream commerce in India
SWIRL – A Live Video Commerce Technology platform joins hands with Whoppl, an influencer marketing agency to provide a livestream shopping platform to its clients. With this partnership, Whoppl can now add an edgy new live commerce offering to its bouquet of services.
Since its launch in 2019, Swirl has worked with multiple brands both in India and in international markets. However, this partnership will be a first for Swirl as it enters the world of agencies specializing in influencer content creation, viral marketing, and social media.
According to GroupM INCA’s India Influencer Marketing Report, the influencer marketing industry in India is valued at INR 900 CR at the end of 2021, and expected to grow exponentially to INR 2200 CR by 2025.
Brands are increasingly adding influencer marketing to their campaign plans, especially during the last two years of pandemic-related retail shutdowns. Influencers in the beauty, fashion, food, lifestyle and tech space are in high demand, and can significantly improve the engagement for a brand.
Read more about how livestreaming and shoppertainment is disrupting the ecommerce industry.
A win-win partnership
Whoppl provides byte-sized viral videos shot in studios, live tracking of campaign performance, and a roster of some of the most influential content creators in the country. For Whoppl, adding livestream shopping is a natural extension to the services they already offer. This will allow their clients to leverage Swirl’s video commerce solution to enhance customer retention and boost sales conversions.
Ramya Ramachandran, founder and CEO at Whoppl believes that the time is ripe for a partnership like this:
“We feel elated with the partnership as live commerce is poised to grow exponentially in India. We want to have the first mover advantage of being an agency delivering content that makes live commerce more engaging and fun. Today consumers spend a lot of time on the Internet, and we want to make that experience more exciting, which leads to conversion.
Swirl gives us readymade access for our brands to be a part of the ecosystem. As a content company, the Swirl platform offers a seamless integration so we become content support for the brand with our influencer ecosystem.
Looking at the markets in China, live commerce is set to grow to about $4-5 billion by 2025 in India. We have a massive audience and demographic to tap, right from urban to regional content, and we’re very excited to be working together and adding a new service for the brands in our portfolio.”
Swirl offers a sophisticated SaaS platform that enables brands to create and host immersive video shopping events and invite viewers with an easy single-click link. The offerings range from one-to-many and one-to-one live shopping, virtual shopping, and short video content.
Kaizad Hansotia, founder and CEO of Swirl Live Shopping says this partnership was a no-brainer for them to choose Whoppl:
“We have been getting non-stop enquiries from our clients about creating a shoppertainment-style experience for their customers through influencer-led content created by a professional agency on our platform. Ramya and her team’s stellar record of working with several top brands in India, and most importantly, specialising in influencer led content, community, commerce model made them formidable partners to work with.
Live Commerce is the first step in the direction of a metaverse, which like it or not, is going to sweep all of us by a storm. Call it eCommerce 3.0. First, it was text, then images and now video. The interactivity is only going to continue increasing and every industry that we know today is ultimately going to adopt the video first digitization approach in the future.
Pegging the market at $5Bn in India by 2025 is an understatement, and this trend is going to just get bigger, and stronger in the time to come. My estimate is that Live Commerce will easily cross $25Bn by 2025, however, the shape and form of the technology will be very different. It will be video first of course, but much more immersive and much more virtual, than what we see today.”
Swirl has partnered with brands ranging from established household names like Pantaloons and Giva, as well as with top brands across India and Europe such as Ivana Helsinki, DNA, etc. Whether the business model is offline, omnichannel, or digital-first, clients can take advantage of a plug-and-play tech platform, without investing in video hosting, livestreaming tech, or video conversion journeys.
Read more about the video-first future of online shopping.
About Swirl Live Shopping
Swirl Live Shopping is a new-age SaaS platform that provides livestreaming and video eCommerce options to companies to boost sales and increase customer engagement and shorten their path to purchase.
With Swirl’s technology, brands can create byte-sized shoppable short videos and conduct 1:1 and 1:Many livestream shopping sessions with customers across all online-offline channels. Using Swirl, brands can receive trackable, actionable data analytics that can be used to predict trends, understand customer requirements and built a database of shoppers for itself.
Started by co-founders with deep knowledge and extensive experience in both start-up and business verticals, Swirl displays a unique understanding of the challenges faced by retail brand owners. The Swirl platform is an easy-to-use, scalable solution that does not require specialised technical knowledge to provide an immersive customer experience that accelerates sales conversions.
SWIRL is a full funnel live commerce solution that helps marketers attract, engage and convert more customers. Enable your website or app with the power of shoppable content to increase AOV, boost conversions and retain customers. If you’re looking for a live commerce solution and want to discuss options, get in touch.