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NEW DELHI: India’s first social currency card company WYLD has raised $350,000 in a pre-seed funding. The seed round was led by Better Capital, and also saw participation from entrepreneurs such as Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta of Image Marketing that sells boAt products, Aditi Shrivastava (Pocket Aces), Malini Agarwal (Miss Malini), Nikunj Lotia (BeYouNick), Pranay Swarup and Julie Kriegshaber (Chtrbox), Rohit Raj (The Glitch), Ankit Kedia (Capital-A), Singularity Ventures, Ganesh Krishnan (Plan B Innovations), Shrishti Sahu, Karthik Bhatt (Force Ventures) and others.
The company will use the funds raised for tech advancements, developing its payment card and building a robust go-to-market strategy.
WYLD is a phygital payment card and mobile app for active social media users(those with over 1000 followers on Instagram) to help them monetise their social influence with every purchase.
Cashing in on the creator economy, WYLD lets its users shop at its wide range of partner brands, online or offline, using the card, and if they choose to post about the product or brand on social media, the users earns substantial cash backs on their purchase. The cashbacks are based on the user’s presence on Instagram which is measured by their WYLD Score - the brand’s proprietary AI social scoring system, determined by the number of followers, reach, engagement, frequency of posts and other such parameters.
The company was founded in 2021 by Yash Sakhlecha, Dishant Sanghvi, Rij Eappen (COO) and Aashna Sakhlecha (Chief Delight Officer).
Aman Gupta, Co-Founder & CMO Imagine Marketing, said, "I believe the future of digital marketing will be in leveraging the clout of the everyday social media user, and the company is geared to be a major disruptor in this space. A platform that allows all active social media users to become brand evangelists, and monetise their network, is a game-changer for brands and users. I think they're going to be a category builder."
Sanghvi of Wyld added, “The possibilities are vast, and needless to say, we’re very excited to have some of the best VCs and tech founders in the country who share our vision and have backed us."
“This is quite simply a productised way for brands to engage social media users at scale and reach their audiences like never before. It’s also a brilliant way for brands to reduce dependency on expensive channels like Google, Facebook and marketplaces with little to no effort," said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of breakout companies like Slice, Open, Rupeek, Teachmint, Jupiter & others.
