{Startup watch: Tring} A tech platform bridging the gap between fans and their fav celebrities

This tech-enabled celebrity engagement platform is bridging the gap between fans and their favourite celebrities.

Dreams of meeting our favourite celebrity almost always remain unfulfilled. Even a glimpse of a favourite celebrity in person or getting their autograph can be a memory to cherish for a lifetime.

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Tring has identified this gap in the market between fans and their favourite celebrities in terms of desiring more of personalization, some interaction, and the celebrities wanting to connect with their fans, individually.

The company offers a quirky way to bring emotional value in the relation between fans and celebrities by enabling conversations that were never easily accessible. The platform has one of the largest roster of local, regional, and international celebrities across genres, offering digital services for fans to connect with their favourite celebrities via video shoutouts, video calls, text messaging, amongst others.

The Tech Panda spoke to Akshay Saini, CEO and Co-founder of Tring about their growth story.

Everybody idolises somebody and our goal is to have ‘somebody for everybody’ on the platform, so the fans can experience bilateral interactions with their dream celebrities, creating permanent memories to cherish for life

“India is a celeb-crazy country with over a billion people who are starstruck by their idols. In South India, we have temples constructed for celebrities. We realized that there’s a market gap, where it’s difficult for fans to have bilateral interaction with their favourite celebrities. While social media brought them on the same platform, Tring introduced the platform that takes Indian fandom to a new level,” he says.

“Our aim is to bridge the gap between a fan and their dream celebrity. We want to be the one-stop platform for all digital services related to celebrities and celebrity engagement. Everybody idolises somebody and our goal is to have ‘somebody for everybody’ on the platform, so the fans can experience bilateral interactions with their dream celebrities, creating permanent memories to cherish for life,” he adds.

What They Do

To connect and interact with their favourite celebrities, fans can visit the Tring website, select their preferred celebrity’s profile, write the message they want the celebrity to share, and complete the booking. The celebrities have the option of accepting or declining the booking request.

“At the core of our service offering is the technology platform that is required to be highly intuitive – so that it allows for a superlative user experience,” says Saini.

This technology should work towards complete automation of the processes, including order booking, payments, refunds, order delivery, etc., thereby providing seamless transactions and an end-to-end positive experience for fans and celebrities.

Moreover, they are driving penetration into tier 2-3 towns, creating a need for the website to become inclusive, catering to various geographies of our country.

“There are also options of pay later and COD (cash on delivery) that supplement our marketing and technology platform initiatives to drive growth in the category,” he says.

The Tring USP

With over 5,000+ celebrities on the platform across different domains, including TV/film stars, regional stars, international artistes, sports persons, motivators, influencers, musicians, and TikTok-ers, ´Tringers´, which is what Tring customers are called, have much to choose from.

They can not only gift personalized celebrity wishes to family and friends on birthdays, anniversaries, and festivals but also use this platform to motivate employees, roast friends, wedding and sangeet occasions, and even baby showers.

Our edge is the seamlessness of the technology that makes reaching out to a celebrity so effortless coupled with the near-cent-percent success delivery rate

Providing convenience and value to customers thru different avenues of celebrity interaction for multitude of use-cases, Saini says the competition comes from various angles.

“Our edge is the seamlessness of the technology that makes reaching out to a celebrity so effortless coupled with the near-cent-percent success delivery rate,” he says proudly.

Challenges Faced

As the concept was new, finding traction with celebrities to come on board, while familiarizing the audience with this new age gifting concept was one of the key hurdles. Over a period, getting suitable investors and raising capital became the next challenge.

“With the potential of this platform, it is important to keep investing in technology, driving demand, and growing the celebrities on the platform,” says Saini.

Growth Story

Tring has been a well acknowledged disruptor and has received funding from renowned investors like ALT Balaji, Flipkart, Udaan, and Venture Network India, to name a few.

Just a little over a year old, the platform offers celebrity engagement services from 5,000+ celebrities on the platform. There are over 1,00,000+ signed up users. The requests range from personalized birthday wishes, milestone anniversary celebrations, to pranks and motivational message requests.

There is explosive potential to be unlocked and that is the goal of the team in the near future, to add value across different offerings

Also through Tring For Business, many SME businesses and startups are using cost-effective celebrity services to increase brand credibility, brand promotion, product launch, new branch opening, gifts for customers and dealers, amongst many other use cases.

Celebrities are now increasingly collaborating with Tring to raise awareness and mobilize funds for causes that are close to their heart. This collaboration is part of the initiative called Icons for Change that achieved massive social impact in 2020, by raising 22,000+ PPE kits from 25+ countries that were delivered to 50+ hospitals across India to the medical frontline workers to protect them as they treated COVID-19 patients.

As Icons for Change comes back in 2021, it has so far featured Taapsee Pannu, Tamannaah Bhatia, and now Dia Mirza, who have all pursued their respective social missions, to put out more good in to this world.

Future Plans

The company is planning to expand the business, optimize the technology and operations, onboard more celebrities, and are constantly introducing new features and services to increase engagement on the platform.

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They have recently rolled out a gaming page that lets winners avail celebrity services at huge discounts. They are investing in technology to make it more robust, ensuring seamless user experiences. At the same time, their marketing team is working to drive awareness for Tring through various initiatives across tier 1,2 and 3 cities.

“There is explosive potential to be unlocked and that is the goal of the team in the near future, to add value across different offerings,” Saini concludes.