Globally, leading brands are trying to ensure their presence in social media. In their endeavour, they are aided by Unmetric, a social media benchmarking company that offers data on presence in this space and benchmarks brands against trends in their sectors.
"It is a new world for brands and consumers alike. We help brands answer a fundamental question: Is your brand social enough?" says Lakshmanan Narayan, co-founder and chief executive of Unmetric, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider that mines and analyses data in social media for its clients. It also works as a competitive intelligence gatherer in this segment.
The beginning
In 2010, Narayan, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, along with friends Joseph Varghese and Kumar Krishnasami, started Eyes And Feet, which offered information on branding activities of competitors to small and medium businesses (SMBs) such as bars, restaurants and spas. However, they soon realised SMBs couldn't spend much time and money to track competition.
Big brands, meanwhile, were interested in the kind of data Eyes And Feet provided. In 2011, the Eyes And Feet team shifted its focus to big brands and changed its name to Unmetric.
The company's clients include Subway, Volvo, Cadillac, Toyota, GroupM, Cisco, Suncorp and Chevorlet, apart from Indian companies such as Aircel, Micromax, Axis Bank, Cafe Coffee Day, Club Mahindra, Myntra and ITC Hotels.
The company claims while there are social media experts and analytics tools across the globe, there is a need to derive meaning from the data. And, the increasing importance of social media in the scheme of things of companies offers immense potential.
Business model
Unmetric's business is based on subscription. It has two revenue models - one from brands and the other from their branding and communication agencies. For brands, the company offers services for a period and payments are based on the services sought. For instance, a company that needs to track the activities of a particular set of peers on a social platform, say, Twitter, is charged less than a company that opts for data on various social media, for a wider range of competitors.
For agencies, the company introduced a pay-according-to-use model in September 2012. Under this, they can buy services and use these for immediate needs.
"We don't own a single piece of infrastructure; we run on 52 servers, leased from Amazon. Everything is on the cloud. So, that is a big competitive edge for us," Narayan had said at a conference last year. As of this month, the number of servers leased from Amazon stands at 100. The company has a database of about 19,000 brands across 30 sectors.
"Revenues have been in line with our expectations, with key beverages, telecom, banking and automobile brands on board as clients."
Fund-raising
Soon after Unmetric was launched, it raised Rs 16 crore from Nexus Venture Partners. In September 2013, Nexus Venture Partners, along with Singapore-based venture capital firm JAFCO Asia, invested Rs 34 crore ($5.5 million (according to the exchange rate then) in series-B funding.
Nexus Venture says the "exceptional team and the large, growing market" were the reasons it invested in Unmetric.
While tools such as Buddy Media and HootSuite helped brands focus on social media as a marketing and customer-engagement channel, there was no way to "analyse the impact" of their efforts. Providing the next logical next step, "benchmarking the brand" against competition, Unmetric provides a way out, says JAFCO Asia.
Future and challenges
"We aim to work closely with the social media community to provide a platform that acts as their extra team member, when it comes to analysis and decision making," says Narayan. The company plans to add social networks to its offerings and rope in more brands and agencies as clients.
The company's focus regions are the US and parts of Asia-Pacific. This year, it plans to expand to Europe, Australia and more Asia-Pacific countries. The company has a 65-member team spread across the US and India. It plans to increase this to about 100. Expansion in markets such as India, however, is difficult. "The challenge, particularly in India, is to change the mindsets of many traditional businesses, which see mass media as the only form of advertising, with social and digital media as mere distractions or an afterthought," Narayan says. This perception is, however, changing, he adds.
UNMETRIC'S JOURNEY SO FAR
Unmetric is essentially a data aggregator that pulls public data from social networks and centralises it on a single platform. It provides value to a marketer in that it offers a holistic view of public social conversation about the brand. Instead of describing and analysing channels separately, these can be done together.
The company secures its data from resellers such as Gnip. Therefore, it doesn't have a competitive advantage, in terms of data access. Its advantage is it is practical and easy to use and allows marketers great flexibility in terms of analysis. Rather than focus on natural language processing or semantic analysis, Unmetric organises volume and engagement metrics.
For example, it allows a marketer to track a post across different channels, pull the engagement metrics (such as likes, shares and comments) and compare channels. It also allows marketers to weight different engagements to come up with aggregate scores.
A significant competitive advantage it offers is design, usability and usefulness. In the long term, Unmetric will have to maintain this edge, which is far from guaranteed. It will also have to increase its client base.
Barriers to entry in this segment are few and public reseller data are available at a cost to everyone. Therefore, Unmetric will have to be aggressive in continuously improving its products and striking partnerships with new social platforms.
Social analytics is a fragmented field, with high growth potential. Because it deals with unstructured data, it is vulnerable to big data scientists inventing powerful new analytical tools that could make incumbents obsolete.
"It is a new world for brands and consumers alike. We help brands answer a fundamental question: Is your brand social enough?" says Lakshmanan Narayan, co-founder and chief executive of Unmetric, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider that mines and analyses data in social media for its clients. It also works as a competitive intelligence gatherer in this segment.
The beginning
In 2010, Narayan, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, along with friends Joseph Varghese and Kumar Krishnasami, started Eyes And Feet, which offered information on branding activities of competitors to small and medium businesses (SMBs) such as bars, restaurants and spas. However, they soon realised SMBs couldn't spend much time and money to track competition.
Big brands, meanwhile, were interested in the kind of data Eyes And Feet provided. In 2011, the Eyes And Feet team shifted its focus to big brands and changed its name to Unmetric.
The company's clients include Subway, Volvo, Cadillac, Toyota, GroupM, Cisco, Suncorp and Chevorlet, apart from Indian companies such as Aircel, Micromax, Axis Bank, Cafe Coffee Day, Club Mahindra, Myntra and ITC Hotels.
The company claims while there are social media experts and analytics tools across the globe, there is a need to derive meaning from the data. And, the increasing importance of social media in the scheme of things of companies offers immense potential.
Business model
Unmetric's business is based on subscription. It has two revenue models - one from brands and the other from their branding and communication agencies. For brands, the company offers services for a period and payments are based on the services sought. For instance, a company that needs to track the activities of a particular set of peers on a social platform, say, Twitter, is charged less than a company that opts for data on various social media, for a wider range of competitors.
For agencies, the company introduced a pay-according-to-use model in September 2012. Under this, they can buy services and use these for immediate needs.
"We don't own a single piece of infrastructure; we run on 52 servers, leased from Amazon. Everything is on the cloud. So, that is a big competitive edge for us," Narayan had said at a conference last year. As of this month, the number of servers leased from Amazon stands at 100. The company has a database of about 19,000 brands across 30 sectors.
"Revenues have been in line with our expectations, with key beverages, telecom, banking and automobile brands on board as clients."
Fund-raising
Soon after Unmetric was launched, it raised Rs 16 crore from Nexus Venture Partners. In September 2013, Nexus Venture Partners, along with Singapore-based venture capital firm JAFCO Asia, invested Rs 34 crore ($5.5 million (according to the exchange rate then) in series-B funding.
Nexus Venture says the "exceptional team and the large, growing market" were the reasons it invested in Unmetric.
While tools such as Buddy Media and HootSuite helped brands focus on social media as a marketing and customer-engagement channel, there was no way to "analyse the impact" of their efforts. Providing the next logical next step, "benchmarking the brand" against competition, Unmetric provides a way out, says JAFCO Asia.
Future and challenges
"We aim to work closely with the social media community to provide a platform that acts as their extra team member, when it comes to analysis and decision making," says Narayan. The company plans to add social networks to its offerings and rope in more brands and agencies as clients.
The company's focus regions are the US and parts of Asia-Pacific. This year, it plans to expand to Europe, Australia and more Asia-Pacific countries. The company has a 65-member team spread across the US and India. It plans to increase this to about 100. Expansion in markets such as India, however, is difficult. "The challenge, particularly in India, is to change the mindsets of many traditional businesses, which see mass media as the only form of advertising, with social and digital media as mere distractions or an afterthought," Narayan says. This perception is, however, changing, he adds.
UNMETRIC'S JOURNEY SO FAR
- Started in 2010 as Eyes And Feet; renamed Unmetric within a year
- Changed focus from small & medium businesses to big brands
- Clients include Subway, Volvo, Cadillac, Toyota, GroupM, Cisco
- Nexus Venture Partners (NVP) infused Rs 6 crore in 2011
- NVP & JAFCO Asia invested Rs 34 crore in September 2013
- Has built a database of 19,000 brands in a little over 30 sectors
Unmetric is essentially a data aggregator that pulls public data from social networks and centralises it on a single platform. It provides value to a marketer in that it offers a holistic view of public social conversation about the brand. Instead of describing and analysing channels separately, these can be done together.
The company secures its data from resellers such as Gnip. Therefore, it doesn't have a competitive advantage, in terms of data access. Its advantage is it is practical and easy to use and allows marketers great flexibility in terms of analysis. Rather than focus on natural language processing or semantic analysis, Unmetric organises volume and engagement metrics.
For example, it allows a marketer to track a post across different channels, pull the engagement metrics (such as likes, shares and comments) and compare channels. It also allows marketers to weight different engagements to come up with aggregate scores.
A significant competitive advantage it offers is design, usability and usefulness. In the long term, Unmetric will have to maintain this edge, which is far from guaranteed. It will also have to increase its client base.
Barriers to entry in this segment are few and public reseller data are available at a cost to everyone. Therefore, Unmetric will have to be aggressive in continuously improving its products and striking partnerships with new social platforms.
Social analytics is a fragmented field, with high growth potential. Because it deals with unstructured data, it is vulnerable to big data scientists inventing powerful new analytical tools that could make incumbents obsolete.
Martin Kihn is research director, Gartner Research