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Tag: Little Black Book

  • Nykaa gets board approval to buy digital lifestyle platform Little Black Book

    Nykaa gets board approval to buy digital lifestyle platform Little Black Book

    Mumbai: Nykaa has confirmed its board’s approval for the acquisition of Iluminar Media’s Little Black Book (LBB), a millennial-focused lifestyle discovery platform. This is in line with Nykaa’s fundamental, content-first strategy for connecting with its devoted customer base.

    LBB is a popular content hub thanks to its sizable, discerning user base, content creation ability, curation mindset, and connections to up-and-coming brands. Nykaa believes that LBB’s emphasis on the fashion, home, and beauty categories will complement Nykaa’s strong points.  

    Nykaa spokesperson Nihir Parikh said, “At Nykaa, we are committed to offering the best to our consumers and making their shopping experience delightful. We are excited about the strong synergies we share with LBB, much like Nykaa, they have sharply focused on driving discovery and spotlighting promising homegrown brands across their channels since day one.”

    “We welcome their like-minded leadership into the Nykaa family and look forward to helping them scale, as together we better serve our audience base,” added Parikh.  

    According to Nykaa, its market leadership in beauty and lifestyle is a result of its core strengths, which include a content-first approach, curated offerings, and a discovery-led shopping experience. LBB’s strengths in these areas will complement Nykaa and Nykaa Fashion’s vision of constantly enriching their customers’ shopping experiences.  

    LBB co-founder and CEO Suchita Salwan said, “Through this partnership with Nykaa, we’re excited to scale to even greater heights. Together, we want to drive value to Nykaa and LBB’s shared goals to build discovery for India’s emerging brands through content, community, and a discovery-first approach.”  

    She further added, “LBB’s robust content creation capabilities and creator network will be leveraged within Nykaa’s platforms to drive consumer engagement and retention, further scaling reach and engagement for our brand partners.”

    Suchita Salwan and Dhruv Mathur co-founded LBB (Little Black Book) in 2015, and it has grown from a Tumblr blog to a popular online marketplace.  LBB has established a brand and an audience among India’s urban millennials, reaching over 70 million users through various channels. Their emphasis on audience engagement through content and discovery has made them a brand beloved by both users and brand partners.

  • Little Black Book audience is very high intent, says founder & CEO Suchita Salwan

    Little Black Book audience is very high intent, says founder & CEO Suchita Salwan

    MUMBAI: Connecting more than 4 million users to about a hundred thousand brands across 10 cities in the country, Delhi-based discovery and recommendation platform Little Black Book (LBB) is leading a diverse route in the evolving world of content-led commerce. Probably the first home-grown brand helping the audience in exclusively discovering and recommending places and experiences around them, LBB today is an extremely popular reference in the vocabulary of Indian millennials.

    LBB founder and CEO Suchita Salwan told Indiantelevision.com that the concept of LBB has grown from a mere discovery and referral platform to a marketing support for SMEs and even larger brands. The platform is not only helping small and medium businesses get popular and increase footfall but is also creating enriching and interesting marketing campaigns for brands like Cadbury’s, W, and Fabindia.

    “We have grown tremendously and have secured more than $7 million worth of investments. But the mission of LBB is still the same, as it was when we started it in 2015. The core of LBB has always been about how to discover, what to discover, and for whom to discover. We have based our business on consumer insights, market dynamics, and as well as changing technologies,” she noted.

    The platform, which also is available as an app, at first glance might look like any other content platform online with well-written posts on eateries, tourist spots, experiences, and products aided with well-captured pictures and sharing options, but has a very different model of functioning.

    Salwan shared, “The content that you see on LBB is community-generated and not created in-house as other traditional content platforms host. That is our key differentiator. Secondly, we are not an entertainment platform like them, but an infotainment channel.”

    She added, “The audience that comes to LBB has very high intent. They land on our platform only when they are seeking authentic experiences or places, which they can put their money and time on. For example, someone watching how south Delhi girls talk is there for entertainment and not looking for some brand they might have plugged in.”

    This whole model helps the businesses and brands in getting authentic attention that eventually leads to increased recognition, popularity, and footfall in their physical stores or online channels.

    Salwan said, “We have two business models. The commerce side of it is very young and recent. For the past 3-4 years, we have been actively working with brands, of every size, and helping them get more eyeballs, and launch new products in a more targeted fashion. Our promise to a brand is better revenue and recognition. We work on multiple sides of the campaign to achieve this. We provide full-stack solutions to Indian brands that want to target the young Indian millennial audience.”

    The online platform is quite popular among the masses and has over 1 million app downloads and an average app rating of 4.6 on the Google Play Store, as shared by Salwan. Similarly, most of the brands now recognise LBB and are willing to spend some money on marketing through LBB.

    Speaking about how LBB markets itself into the B2B space, Salwan shared that the platform has been lucky in terms of recall. “We have recently grown our sales team and it is quite young. Fortunately, for us, a lot of brand managers are already LBB users and have our app on their phone. They know what our brand is about.”

    She continued further, “A large part of our marketing has been really organic. The referral rate on LBB is very high; people telling their friends to download the app as it is very useful. Other than that, SEO is huge for us. We spend a lot on optimisation on Google. Facebook and Instagram are the other recent channels that we use to get consumers on our platforms.”

  • Little Black Book (LBB) raises $ 5 million in Series A from Inventus India, IAN Fund, Dream Incubator, AET Fund and existing investors

    Little Black Book (LBB) raises $ 5 million in Series A from Inventus India, IAN Fund, Dream Incubator, AET Fund and existing investors

    MUMBAI: Iluminar Media, which owns and operates Little Black Book/LBB, India’s definitive platform to find and shop from local brands and businesses has raised $ 5 million in Series A led by Inventus India and IAN Fund. Japanese investors Dream Incubator and Akatsuki Entertainment Technology (AET) Fund, and existing investors Blume Ventures, and Chiratae Ventures also participated in the round.

    LBB will use the newly raised funds to expand the technology & product team with a focus on machine learning (ML) for discovery, and integration of content with commerce. The company plans to strengthen its footprint in India and scale by integrating discovery with commerce for small – medium size businesses.

    A web and app based platform, LBB today reaches out to over 3 million users every month, connecting users to over 60,000 local brands and businesses across 8 markets in India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai. Over the past year, LBB has doubled its audience, grown its customer retention, and registered a growth of over 75% in revenue. Newly launched content to commerce on the platform is seeing a 30% M-o-M growth, with over 500+ brands and 15,000+ products selling through LBB.

    On the new investment Rutvik Doshi, Managing Director, Inventus India said, “We are excited to partner with Suchita, Dhruv and team LBB in their next phase of growth. The LBB team has built a product and brand that’s garnered immense organic traction and loyalty pan-India. What attracted us most to LBB is how they’ve made community a continued narrative in their promise to make local brands and businesses more accessible. They have demonstrated their ability in building a platform that consumer’s love, while also building a robust monetisation model that’s powered their growth.”

    Speaking on the investment, Saurabh Srivastava, Co-Founder, Indian Angel Network (IAN) Fund, said, “In a relatively short time since its inception, LBB has emerged as the preferred platform for new-age Indians to discover engaging local activities, experiences, and independent brands in their cities. Having invested in LBB in the pre-series A stage, we are delighted to participate in this round and support their vision to build an integrated discovery platform that is driven by content, community and commerce for small – medium size businesses. We have full faith in the strength of the team and are confident that they will continue to build on their strong growth momentum to emerge as a clear domain leader.”

    Existing investor Sanjay Nath, Managing Partner at Blume Ventures said, “LBB has grown phenomenally in the past few years driven by Suchita and Dhruv’s inspiring leadership and stellar execution. They are reinventing how content, recommendations and information can drive meaningful connects and enable seamless commerce between users and businesses.  We are happy with the progress and pleased to further support LBB in this new round, as they chart the path ahead.”

    On investing in LBB, Munehiko Eto, Managing Director, DIAI India Private Limited (the India entity of Dream Incubator Inc, said, “We’ve been closely watching LBB’s growth and performance since 2017. The growth numbers have been fantastic and is a validation of the concept. Suchita & Dhruv –
     
    have grown LBB to become one of the most sought after recommendation & discovery platform in India. They have made local discovery fun and created a content to commerce solution for local businesses. With this DI intends to accelerate its investment in India’s digital media sector including socio-consumer tech.”

    Yuki Kawamura Principal at AET Fund (Akatsuki Entertainment Technology Fund) quoted, “We are thrilled to be part of LBB's growth in the local discovery space in India. Together with the strong leadership of Suchita and Dhruv, we aim to support local experiences' discovery space, which we believe, solves multitudes of problems for people and communities and also brings joy to them. Location-based inspirational storytelling is at the heart of LBB and it offers something for everyone. This investment will enable us to continue our support for developing content based businesses and assist heart-driven businesses in their journeys."

    On the fundraise Dhruv Mathur, Co-founder, Little Black Book (LBB) said, “We’re glad to have found partners in Inventus Capital, IAN Fund, Dream Incubator & AET as we move into the next phase of growth which will primarily be focused on integrating discovery with commerce and open up a platform and space for SMBs in India. Our thesis is that small to medium businesses find it very difficult to get discovered on social media and large marketplaces- LBB seeks to solve that and give today's young consumer access to new brands and businesses.”

    Co-founded by Suchita Salwan and Dhruv Mathur, LBB has raised a total of $7.5 million till date with this round. Apart from institutional investors, they also have angel investors such as Rajan Anandan, Sachin Bhatia and Niraj Singh supporting the company since its founding.