Life waits for nobody, and that continues to be a takeaway as the pandemic rolls on. During the last one year or so, something interesting has happened. A lot of people have been forced to turn a side hustle into a 24x7 gig. For some, the move has been forced while for others, it’s about leading life on their terms. From offering workshops on the “art of self-expression” to dance classes for kids, from finding what lies in an actor’s life to how to get a podcast up and running, people have truly hustled to swim against all odds, to make a living.

But wait, there’s a problem. In this one year we have also heard how “this person who’s my cousin’s friend” can make one a better dancer or “that man who runs a gym in that lane” can offer fitness lessons. Is there a platform where I can find instructors? Or is there a platform where I can share my expertise? Lately, one name has been coming up often — TagMango. Here you can be a follower or a creator… it’s that simple. TagMango logs into the creator economy and has quickly built up a base.

Behind TagMango are Divyanshu Damani and Mohammad Hasan, who are both from Calcutta, and their start-up is the result of a six-year-old friendship. “I come from a creator/influencer background and one of the challenges I have faced on social media is monetisation. I may have, say, 300,000 followers on social media but what next? Hasan and I have been dabbling with several start-up ideas for some years and TagMango is the result,” says Damani over a call.

Divyanshu Damani (right) and Mohammad Hasan, co-founders of TagMango Sourced by the correspondent

The boys from Calcutta have a base here as well as in Mumbai, and they have been able to move quite fast. Co-founding TagMango in 2019, they have raised over $850K in a seed funding round and are backed by Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund and Kevin Lin (co-founder of Twitch), among others.

The idea is simple. If you are on TagMango as a user, just choose the creator/influencer who you think works for you. The creator can be an expert in the area of finance, fitness, acting and so on. Creators are allowed to charge a fee, which varies from person to person and that’s it. The set-up presently has 20 members.

One-to-one communication helps. A creator, for example, may have a million followers on Instagram but it doesn’t mean the person is reaching out to all of them because of the algorithm at play. “There are people who would like to see deeper interactions, even if that means reaching out to, say, 20,000 followers,” says 25-year-old Damani.

Before TagMango, Damani, who’s a graduate from St. Xavier’s College (Calcutta), had managed to build a strong following of about 300,000 across social media platforms and has over 100m views on his videos. As for 26-year-old Hasan — a graduate from Techno College — the software engineer likes to be involved on the technical side. Hasan started his first company in his first year of college, called Fleapo, which he scaled to three countries with over 60 members working globally.

“We kept meeting for coffee to discuss what’s happening in the start-up ecosystem. After like three-four years of random meet-ups, we decided to go for it,” says Damani.

It’s essential to have a catchy name for a start-up and they have done pretty well. “While thinking of a name, the criterion involved coming up with a dot.com option. We were playing around with words. Mango and ‘aam janta’ were on our mind and then the word ‘tag’ was added. Instead of ‘Mango Tag’, this proved to be catchy and, very importantly, the domain name was available,” says Hasan.

The audience TagMango is targeting is different from what you get on, say, Cameo or Tring that help you connect with celebrities for personalised messages. TagMango connects users and creators about something very focused.

During the pandemic, all our lives moved to the digital world and the platform has seen a surge. For example, 4,000 creators have signed on in the first four months of 2021 while 20,000 users have signed up during the same period.

What lies before Damani and Hasan are a lot of visits between their offices in Calcutta and Mumbai. Downturns or challenging phases can motivate. What TagMango has succeeded in doing is figuring out customer needs at the moment.