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Frankly

Messaging app for frank conversations
Startup Cemetery

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GENERAL INFORMATION
Category:
Social Media
Country:
India
Started:
2014
BUSINESS FAILURE
Outcome:
Shut Down
Cause:
Lack of PMF
Closed:
2016
FOUNDERS & EMPLOYEES
Number of Founders:
2
Name of Founders:
Abhishek Gupta, Nikunj Jain
Number of Employees:
50-100
FUNDING
Number of Funding Rounds:
1
Total Funding Amount:
$600K
Number of Investors:
1

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What was Frankly?

Frankly.me was a Q&A social platform which targeted Indian users in particular, where people could directly connect to public figures to ask them questions. Questions with the most upvotes had the most chance of being seen and replied to by celebrities. Famous people could publish a 90 seconds video on the platform (‘velfies’ or vlogs, as they were referred to) to give a response to popular posts addressed to them. Furthermore, anyone could sign up and share 90 sec videos with other users.

Why did Frankly fail and shut down?

The first reason that was advanced for the shutting down of the platform after less than two years on the market was that it wasn’t able to raise the necessary round of funding.

However, Nikunj Jain, one of the CEOs of Frankly.me, wrote a post to specifically deny that funding had been the major issue. He attributed the failure of their platform to not being able “to achieve sustainable product market fit”. Jain went on to say that despite the widespread video consumption in the market, the video creation process seemed to be a challenge.

In fact, it might be unlikely that public figures could find the time to commit to using this specific platform to reply to their followers with vlogs for the long term, especially if there were other platforms that could connect them to an international audience.

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