An Indian Fashion Social Network Wants To Provide a Platform For All Small Business Owners Roposo's chat-to-buy feature caters to the small businesses and an audience which lives and breathes fashion. With this feature, the company aims to provide visibility to the smaller players, boutiques in tier 2 and 3 cities.

While working with big brands such as Gionee and Flipkart, this Indian social media platform for fashion addicts has now introduced technology features to encourage small business owners to embrace the vulnerability of "ecommerce.'

Roposo is a fashion social network and acts as a destination for style lovers to search for and discover fashion-forward products, trend stories, reviews, DIYs, and style inspirations. All a user has to do is search for a product they like and Roposo's proprietary recommendation engines will scan the Internet to find them the best matches as per their personal preferences and tastes.

The company has recently taken a step ahead and launched chat-to-buy to encourage small business owners. Elaborating further on this, Co-founder and CEO Mayank Bhangadia told Entrepreneur India that the chat to buy is a one-place, smart solution to buying on chat, which enables lesser but more intelligent interactions between buyer and sellers. Further a buyer can browse the seller's shop even when he is offline.

Giving every business owner the online visibility

"Until now, small businesses closed most of their online transaction on call or phone chats. However, they struggled to use a generic chat platform for business purposes.... The chat-to-buy feature is uniquely positioned to cater to the small businesses and an audience which lives and breathes fashion. With this feature, we aim to give visibility to the smaller players, boutiques in tier 2 and 3 cities.

Visibility to these small sellers is lost on other social networks, where bigger brands with deeper pockets are bidding on the same audience. Both Instagram and Facebook have in the past year announced plans for business tools, which are still in the testing phase in a handful of developed countries," he said

"We plan to revolutionise the whole social ecommerce platform in India, and make fashion accessible to all. There are several new tech features coming up to support the same. We are also planning to build a strong community of SMBs from tier 2&3 cities. 2017 will be a good year!" he adds.

The company was founded in July 2014 by three IIT Delhi alumni, Mayank Bhangadia, Avinash Saxena (ex-CTO of Zomato) and Kaushal Shubhank. While Roposo was conceptualised in July 2014, the app was launched in April 2015.It has raised a total funding of $21 million till date with top investors in the country including Tiger Global, India Quotient and Flipkart's CEO Binny Bansal having infused capital in it.

How does the platform work?

Roposo is a bridge that connects the gap between "what you see' and "how to get'. The moment a user posts something that you like, you get linked to similar products that you can actually buy." All a user has to do is type the name of a product they like and Roposo's proprietary recommendation engines will scan the internet to find them the best matches as per their personal preferences and tastes. Users can shop for new products and trends that are curated and updated every day from across 10,000 brands.

The best thing about Roposo is that it is completely personalised and curated as per your individual design and fashion taste. For example, if you type "Black Dress for parties," the search engine will share only those BDs and brands that suit your taste and preferences. One can discover your own unique style on our platform. Also, if one likes a photo posted by a user, the platform can scan the internet and help you buy the same or similar dress from across numerous fashion commerce portals.

"With the launch of the chat-to-buy feature, Roposo not only facilitates the discovery of these products, but now also focuses on the closure of these transactions through the smart chat feature. It eases the communication between sellers and buyers," Mayank claims.

Roposo has more than 2,000 offline stores are present on Roposo including Jabong, Yepme, L'Oreal, Snapdeal, and Flipkart. The platform has more than 3 million active users today; subscriber base escalating 4x every month, the company claims.