Chances are, a teenager you know is using Uable — a social networking app dedicated to teens. The Bengaluru-based start-up founded in October 2021 claims over 2.5 lakh users, all of whom are in the 13-19 age bracket.
Founded by Saurabh Saxena (ex-founder of edtech Vedantu) and Vasavi Kandula, the app raised $4.5 million from investors such as JAFCO Asia, Chiratae Ventures and 3one4 Capital early last year.
Three Cs
Uable’s credo, according to Saxena, is content, community, and commerce. The app encourages a youthful audience to create and consume content in subtle and obvious ways, and features a variety of teen-focussed brands.
It lets users post videos and photos to the Instagram-style feed, join interest-based clubs, hang out on chat servers similar to Discord (the messaging platform), and shop for products at the U-store decked out with gadgets, books, accessories, and apparel.
The app is full of breezy polls about pop culture, memes on being bad at math, group chats about their recently-resumed school life, pictures of pencil sketches, and other fixtures of teenage life.
At a time when social networking behemoths like Facebook and Instagram tussle with an ageing user base and loss of teenage users, Uable sees an opportunity to attract brands to this teen destination. After all, teenagers are big influencers when it comes to household spends.
The idea is that their early exposure to the featured brands could turn into lifelong loyalties, and brands such as Snackible, boAt, The Souled Store, Portronics (teen wearables), FLNG (teen merchandise), Beauprty (teen skincare), Streak (teen fintech), seem to want to leverage that.
Social currency
All of the activity on the platform is enabled by the app’s in-built social currency called U-coins, given as rewards for high engagement, used to unlock premium content and redeemed to avail discounts on products in the U-store, which is then bought with money.
Sixteen-year-old Madhur from Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, has more friends on the app than in real life, and he blames Covid for it. With close to 7,000 followers, Madhur — an aspiring content creator — found his audience on Uable.
After multiple failed attempts at vlogging on YouTube and dealing with hate and trolling, he believes, Uable is a safe space for him to experiment, put out relatable content, and make friends in the process.
As a ‘top-creator’ who has been on the app since its inception, he has spent his money on audio lectures about designing, one of his areas of interest, and on purchasing a boAt earphone.
“I don’t shop a lot, but I spend an hour on the app almost every day, and everything in the shopping section like tech products, books, and gaming stuff are usually at a discount. Very pocket-friendly for us teens,” says Madhur.
But it’s not a shopping app, clarifies Saxena. While the focus is still on creating social networks, brands are onboarded to add value to a teen’s life.
They provide internships, create clubs, launch products, offer premium learning material, and directly engage with users to get feedback. They see immense value in making meaningful connections with their teen audience, explains Saxena.
Ad-free model
The app is purposely ad-free to counter negative effects of advertising on young minds and is free-to-use as they want it to reach the widest possible audience —10 million teenagers by the end of 2023 is the set target.
“Social media came by as one media for all. Then, there comes a certain degree of fatigue and saturation with one media for all, and there is segmentation. It’s an idea whose time has come possibly, but achieving scale is the secret to success in this place. It is extremely critical to have to reach a wide audience faster than later. A subset of that scale is participation. Participation is the ultimate parameter to see if a site is alive or dying. A networking app that is appealing to teenagers needs to be completely participative, completely active, and instant,” says Harish Bijoor, brand and business strategy consultant.
While it is still in its nascent stages of monetisation, the revenue comes from the e-commerce happening in the U-store and the premium learning material made available on the platform. Uable is expected to break even only by 2025.
Adults need to shift the conversation around teens’ social media use away from a general mistrust and antagony and more toward creating safe spaces for healthy socialisation and exploring different interests.
“Today’s teenagers are digital natives. They are going to use smartphones whether we like it or not. So, it’s about making their smartphone usage more valuable than just browsing through social media aimlessly, instead of imposing curbs. We need to nurture their diverse interests, provide them a judgement-free zone to express themselves, and give them a platform to discover products they care about,” says Saxena.