It is quite evident that the creator economy is booming and the numbers tell the story. A report suggests that 3,500 brands and 5,000 creator partners in India are engaged in creator-driven branded content. It also predicted that 1 million social media creators in India will earn over $500 every month within three years.
This is a $100 billion market, but unfortunately, creators are failing to monetise content. Only 150,000 of 80 million creators in India are able to monetise, which is only 0.2% of the creator community. They don’t just want tools, they need more engaging fans. That’s where the blockchain-based creative monetisation platform called Fanztar comes in.
Founded by Himanshu Garg and Sahil Singla, Fanztar is a creator-first marketplace empowering creators to kickstart monetisation via revenue sharing with fans and enabling data-driven brand matchmaking. The startup empowers creators to build their fan communities and enables fans to own a share in their success. It gives fans a unique opportunity to become a part of the Creator’s exclusive community.
Also Read: From The Creator-Verse: New Content Comes Our Way
How Does Fanztar Work?
As a fan, you get the chance to own a share of a creator’s income and get special privileges like exclusive content, behind-the-scenes content, meet-and-greet opportunities, backstage access, social hangouts, virtual interactions and much more. A creator can sign up on the Fanztar platform and create a profile as a creator who wants to launch the fan card collection to sell to their followers.
The platform generates certain digital cards on the blockchain, which are called non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and are linked to the IP rights of the content that this creator is going to create over the next 18 months or so—a digital asset, linked to your Instagram profile or your YouTube content.
- Creators launch their Fan Card collections on Fanztar that fans can purchase to support and back their favourite creators.
- Fan Card holders get access to exclusive Creator communities, experiences and a share of a Creator’s growth.
- Fans collect cards to boost their rank and participate in various contests to win exciting rewards.
- Currently, Fanztar is not charging the creators to be on the platform but takes a 20-25% commission on sales that happen on the cards.
“We are heading towards a future where web3 will upend business models across industries. For the first time, fans now have an opportunity to become part of the value creation journey of a creator, enabling them to become active players in the process rather than be passive consumers of content. For creators, we are opening up a new channel of monetisation, engagement and advocacy in the form of incentivised fans,” said Himanshu Garg, co-founder and CEO, Fanztar.
Brands x Creators
The second part of the business is where Fanztar helps brands connect with creators. “We work with brands to help them identify breakthrough creators, especially those that can give higher ROI in terms of buying decisions. This is B2B business we launched in March 2023 that is doing pretty well,” says Himanshu. So far, the startup has onboarded more than 1,000 creators on its platform, and around 44,000 fan cards have been sold in one year.
Essentially, Fanztar collects two buckets of creators—micro (10k-100k followers) and emerging creators (100-500k followers). “Currently, we are focused on mostly English and Hindi-speaking creators—a certain set to create that network effect. We will be language agnostic as we go in the future.“
They basically target a few genres of creators – from tech and finance to lifestyle, comedy, and bloggers. Himanshu admits that initially, it was very difficult to convince the creators to share a part of their future income with fans. But they had a few case studies that demonstrated the impact this model can have on their engagement, which brings in greater brand revenue and can increase their income.
It then became easy to approach the creators given the several talent management agencies that work with Fanztar. They also work directly with creator programs of certain social media platforms, like ShareChat, which makes the whole model easier and more credible.
The Founders
Himanshu Garg is an IIT-Delhi graduate with experience in early-stage teams in startups like Delhivery and a healthcare startup. He started Fanztar along with his batchmate Sahil Singla in September 2022. According to Himanshu, platforms like Instagram and Facebook have democratised content creation, making it easy for everybody to put out content. However, it hasn’t ensured that all creators receive an equal share of the value created from the content. Fanztar aims to bridge this gap.
Fanztar’s Growth
The web3 platform had raised Rs 5 crore in a funding round led by India Quotient. Angel investors included ShareChat founders Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan, as well as Sarthak Misra, SoftBank India‘s investment director, Manohar Charan (ShareChat’s CFO), and Tarsame Mittal, founder of TM Ventures.
Fanztar’s aim is to utilize the funds towards product development to cater to the evolving market demands. Additionally, the platform will also expand its technology and business teams and empower breakthrough creators across the nation. Fanztar will allocate the funds towards product innovation and launching the industry-led product in the market to drive the future of creator monetisation.
“The creator is our main customer, and we are focusing on creating tools to speed up the onboarding process, and the creator awareness process to help them understand the product. In the second phase, we want to create brand-specific solutions to help them make intelligent decisions and increase their ROI. Our goal is to onboard 25,000 creators by the end of the year,” Garg adds.
We look forward to seeing how this interesting creator monetisation platform unfolds and grows.
