Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra has invested $1 million in social media startup Hapramp. Mahindra took to Twitter to announce the investment and said that he has finally found the startup he was looking for after searching for two years.
"Took 2 yrs, but I finally found the start-up I was looking for! Hapramp is indigenous, built by 5 young founders & brings together a best-in-class combination of creativity, technology & data protection. Look out for GoSocial, their social networking platform," tweeted Mahindra. He quoted a tweet from 2018 where he had said that it was time to have our own social networking company in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. "Any relevant Indian start-ups out there? If any young teams have such plans I'd like to see if I can assist with seed capital," he had asked then.
The social networking startup backed by Mahindra would use the seed funding to work on big social media challenges such as user privacy, data security, and fair content monetisation, said Hapramp on Wednesday. Their flagship social networking solution GoSocial is an app that rewards artists and creators for posting and engaging with the community. It is available on Google Play Store and soon will be up on Apple's App Store.
Founded by a team of five Computer Science graduates in 2018, Hapramp seeks to give users the control of their data and earn a fraction from its monetary value.
"We are extremely excited and proud to be the next-gen Indian social network startup backed by Mr. Anand Mahindra. This is a massive approval of our mission to give creators the right to their content. The fact that this comes from him, someone whom we admire and who has always supported creators, gives us confidence," said CEO and co-founder Shubhendra Vikram.
Besides GoSocial, Hapramp is working on 1Ramp.io, a rewarding social media platform powered by Steem Blockchain; and Asteria Protocol, a new standard for platforms to privately and securely treat public data.
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