Six years ago, our Founder and CEO Priyanka Gill decided to pursue her passion, so she built a platform for women, POPxo. Today, we are India’s largest digital community of women, with close to 48 million monthly active users across all platforms, 30 million of which are on Facebook, and another 6 million on Instagram.
Priyanka was recently invited to be on the Instagram panel of Facebook’s Brand Summit to talk about her journey. The summit, based on the theme of ‘Reimagine Brand Building’, brought together leading brand advertisers to share insights on new code of brand building for 2020 and beyond. The other panellists included Shashishekhar Mukherjee, Head of Digital Marketing, Health, at Reckitt Benkiser; Udit Malhotra, Head of Digital Marketing at Morris Garages India; and radio jockey RJ Abhinavv. The panel was moderated by Prasanjeet Dutta Baruah, Facebook India’s Industry Head of Tech, Telco, Auto and New Businesses, and was a part of the company’s inaugural ‘Building Brands Summit’.
During the panel, Priyanka spoke about the significance of platforms like Facebook and Instagram when it came to building the POPxo community. “Instagram and Facebook were (platforms) where I found my passion, and my passion enabled me to build POPxo, which is now close to six years old. We are a Facebook-first brand; we actually began our life on Facebook and then continued our life on Instagram. Today, we have close to 48 million monthly active users across all platforms – a fairly sizable population.”
But how did that lead to the company becoming India’s largest digital community of women? “83% of our audience is female, so we create content that is relatable and tailored to the Indian millennial woman, and that, single-handedly, is the reason why we have been able to build (this community).”
Also read: Woohooo! Our Founder & CEO Priyanka Gill Has Won The BW Businessworld 40 Under 40 Award
Moving on the who she follows on Instagram, Priyanka said that she is fascinated by how young celebrities use the platform to communicate directly with their audience. “Young stars of today are leveraging Instagram and they’re doing it in a very natural fashion, be it Ananya Pandey or Alia Bhatt or Sara Ali Khan. I think that’s a fantastic, creative use (of the platform) – you cut out PR handles, you cut out the media. I find that fascinating.” Besides the young celebrities, she also applauded veterans like Amitabh Bachchan, who she felt was “seven generations ahead of the whole digital age.” “I find it very interesting as to how personalities use Instagram to carve out and own their own story,” she said.
Also read: From Content To Commerce: Our Founder & CEO Priyanka Gill On How POPxo Makes Money
The panel surely gave the audience some interesting insight into how brands use Instagram to build themselves – and we are so very proud that our leader is showing the world the way to do it!