How Unikon.ai Wants To Change The Professional Networking Dynamics In India

In this era of social media explosion, especially with the proliferation of the internet, an increase in number of mobile users and the advent of GenAI, India was seen cradling 462 Mn social media users in January 2024. 

Just last year, LinkedIn revealed that India was its second-largest market in the world after the US. At the end of the March 2023 quarter, the networking platform saw its India user count surge 19% year-on-year (YoY) to more than 100 Mn, which increased to 120 Mn at the end of January this year.

The professional networking platform attaches this increase in demand to the entry of GenZes into the workforce and the increase in the number of student sign-ups. 

Tapping into this massive market opportunity, Bella Vita cofounder Aakash Anand, along with Sumit Jha and Palash Arneja, has launched an AI and ML-based social-professional platform Unikon.ai. 

The startup aims to help connect individuals – students, working professionals, freelancers – with professionals of their choice like teachers, mentors, counsellors, experts, et al.

For instance, if a user wants to learn a new skill like cooking or coding, the platform will help the individual get easy access to people who engage in the skill. 

However, this is just one facet of Unikon.ai. With this platform, the cofounder aims to solve the gaps that exist in the knowledge-sharing market. 

The Origin Thesis Of Unikon.ai

Although founded in November 2023, Anand launched the platform, Unikon.ai, just last week. Speaking with Inc42, Unikon.ai cofounder Anand, who is also well known for his D2C perfume brand Bella Vita, said that ‘Unikon’ stands for “You and I connect”.

Explaining the rationale behind floating the social networking platform, he said that despite the presence of multiple social networking platforms, he would often struggle to network with the right people in the ecosystem.

“At Unikon.ai, we are addressing the problem of access. The platform allows anyone to set up rates based on the value of their time. Others on the platform can then reach out to them via video calls, audio calls, or messages, all of which are chargeable, to get their queries or advisory answered,” Anand said.

Anand added that the people looking for serious mentorships always value such services. On the other hand, monetisation adds value to the service providers’ time.

Currently, the platform is leveraging machine learning to match enquirers with the right individuals. 

Moving on, Unikon.ai also offers multiple features, each solving the networking and access issues. Among them, Unishorts is seemingly a feather in its cap.

How Is Unikon.ai LinkedIn On Steroids?

While Anand derives inspiration from the world’s biggest social networking platform, the platform has much to offer beyond just connection requests, peer-to-peer messaging and applying for jobs.

Similar to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, the platform’s Unishorts feature allows users to post short videos showcasing their skills such as cooking, training, mentoring, and counselling.

These short videos are captured during sessions on the platform and shared publicly with the consent of both parties.

Anyone who has signed up on Unikon.ai can swipe through these short videos, reacting and commenting on them. The shorts also have a share feature, allowing them to be shared across other social media or messaging platforms.

Anand said this feature helps service providers build their own brands. Additionally, it helps Unikon.ai learn consumer behaviour and collect data, enabling the platform to seamlessly recommend the right course of action to service seekers in the future.

Alongside this, the startup offers another feature, UniSeek, which helps users post all kinds of queries and seek assistance or even hire professionals. The platform uses AI and ML-powered algorithms to match queries with the right individuals.

The platform also enables users to list their webinars where people can sign up as per requirement and price. Anand says that these features and the platform’s transparency are some of its biggest USPs, which other platforms in the market lack.

Meanwhile, Unikon.ai takes a 20% cut on all monetary transactions that take place on the platform, which is currently its only source of revenue.

The startup has already raised INR 16 Cr (around $2 Mn) in its seed funding round from Ananta Capital, and the likes of Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath, Shiprocket’s Vishesh Khurana, Peyush Bansal of Lenskart, OfBusiness’ Nitin Jain and Vasant Sridhar, and Gaurav Khatri of Noise.

Its captable also includes influencers like Tanmay Bhatt, Raj Shamani, Arjun Vaidya, Sharan Hegde, and Ganeshprasad of Thinkschool.

In fact, Unikon.ai is betting heavily on influencer marketing to gain primary traction in the market.

The Road Ahead

Currently, Unikon.ai has about 2,300 registered users on its platform. As per the cofounder, this number is expected to grow to about 7,000 by the end of this week. The startup aims to grow its user base by almost 36X to 2.5 Lakh in the next 12 months. 

Within the next 12 months, the startups wants to achieve 2,000 daily conversations on the platform. Anand said that Unikon.ai will raise its next funding only after achieving this mark.

Meanwhile, the startup is also working on building GenAI models in-house. In the coming years, the platform will also leverage GenAI and build avatars, training them on the data that the platform is collecting, which would further enable users to achieve their professional goals.

As the sea of social media opportunity becomes deeper and wider, Anand believes that every professional would like to be incentivised for their time and knowledge sharing and there would be no free conversations. 

As of now, in a market ruled by tech majors like Microsoft and Meta, it would be interesting to see how Unikon.ai marks its niche in the networking solutions space.

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