UPDATED 16:30 EDT / NOVEMBER 23 2016

NEWS

Too big to fail: How a popular online community monetized its platform | #Amplify

Indian Moms Connect is an online community created by expatriate Indian mothers who wish to connect with one another by sharing personal stories that resonate with the group, as well as seek and share advice regarding traditional Indian culture and child rearing. Initially completely free, the popularity of the site has grown so much in the past few years that it is now seeking funding to support itself. To do this, the site markets items and services that are of specific interest to its user demographic and is now also seeking investment funding to scale the site upward as needed.

Preethi Chandrasekhar, cofounder and CEO of Indian Moms Connect, spoke with Jeff Frick (jefffrick), host of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the Girls in Tech Amplify Women’s Pitch Night event in San Francisco, CA. The two discussed the site and what it is doing to assist transplanted Indian mothers throughout the world, how that community has now grown to the point of requiring funding to support operational costs and how the site is obtaining that funding.

For Indian women, parenting children in a traditional Indian way in a foreign environment can be a real struggle. For these mothers, the ability to share personal stories, experiences and advice is a true godsend.

“Indian Moms Connect is mainly working toward representative content and media for the global Indian mom,” explained Chandrasekhar. “Whether she lives in India or the rest of the world as part of the Indian diaspora, we speak to her.”

The Marketplace

Indian Moms Connect has been around for five years, and its user base has grown to the point that the site owners must begin seeking funding to support operational costs. One way the owners are tackling the funding problem is by allowing contributors and users to advertise their own products through the site as crossposted embeds that lead to an advertisement for those products. The site then gets a cut of any of the products sold.

“We also have a marketplace where unique products that are resonating with this audience, whether it is ethnic clothes and jewlery to language apps and bilingual books, they can find a place and we cross market it on the blog post as product embeds,” said Chandrasekhar.

Shared stories and experiences

“The urban Indian mom, … for her the family system she’s used to is breaking down as she moves into cities and where it’s not the traditional family system, so she looks on the internet for stories as well, or shared experiences,” said Chandraskhar.

Additionally, many of the roles normally taken by elder family members may not exist abroad, in particular with Indian moms who reside in larger cities.

“Traditionally, the grandmothers and aunts congregate and they tell you exactly what to do, and now you’re finding what to do based on where you live,” explained Chandraskhar.

*Disclosure: Girls in Tech and other companies sponsor some Girls in Tech – Amplify segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Girls in Tech nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Girls in Tech – Amplify Women’s Pitch Night 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE

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