Frankly.me raises $600k from Matrix to help connect users with public figures

Frankly.me helps connect people with public figures. We asked co-founder Nikunj Jain if Twitter doesn't already do that to an extent? "Yes, but we want to focus on meaningful conversations. Celebrities have profiles on Frankly.me and people can ask questions and the celebrity has it all in one place to answer," says Nikunj. Based out of Delhi, Frankly.me has raised $600k from Matrix Partners to further develop the product and take it to more users. Frankly's team strength stands at 15.

Public figures for the first time are having direct One on one conversations with millions of Indians. Frankly is a place where you ask and they answer in video selfies.

Frankly is supposed to be for conversations that have never taken place. Be it politicians, authors, singers, directors, social activists, actors, sportsmen, IAS officers or even entrepreneures, Frankly wants to bring them on the platform.

The back story

Nikunj Jain, the co-founder of Frankly used to run InoXapps, a mobile app development company which has been partly sold last year. Nikunj exited from the company and started up again with the new idea- Frankly. While with InoXapps, Nikunj tells us that the company had acquired Zumbl which was a Secret like product being built from India. 

One of the co-founder of Zumbl, Abhishek Gupta found synergies with Nikunj and the duo then started work on Frankly. Currently available on Android, Frankly has a friendly UI and I found to the experience intuitive. Logging in, a user gets to see his or her feed where questions and answers are streamed and a discover tab which allows a user to search for public figures and ask questions. One also makes their own selfie video profile.

Frankly is currently in beta with around 25k registered users and Nikunj tells us that this number is growing at about 1500 users per day. Over 85 public figures are on the platform as of now including the likes of Arvind Kejriwal and Yogendra Yadav, in the field of politics, Kunal Bahl, Naveen Tiwari and Avnish Bajaj when it comes to entrepreneurship in India, some popular DJs. "We were in talks with Arvind Kejriwal and he absolutely loved the platform. Many of the politicians are already on the platform. Once this happened, we started getting calls from other parties and you'd soon see them on the platform," says Nikunj.

Frankly has got a good start and once celebrities from Bollywood and Cricket start becoming active on the platform, the growth can sky rocket. Frankly also has a similarity with Quora and might have lessons to learn from there but it has adjusted well to the Indian market with a mobile first and video approach. Talking about the product roadmap, Nikunj adds, "We want to study user beahviour closely, and keep polishing the product at the same time keep onboarding public figures of different backgrounds and languages."

Website: Frankly