SHEROES

Even with the rapid advancement in technology and spread of internet access, we have struggled to bring women online who often find products and conversations influenced by men (see news, porn, stocks etc.)

SHEROES differentiates itself by virtue of being for women and women first. Safety, empathy and trust are tenets that are built into the platform at every level. 

SHEROES has engineered a digital version of the friend-circle of our youth which is a non judgmental and supportive space built through a community framework where women can create, engage and grow everyday. 

The app also hosts a dedicated helpline where members can talk to our certified counsellors for support on crisis situations and questions around their own journey towards empowerment.

SHEROES is aligned to using internet as a tool for change, especially for women in high gender gap countries offering a space for recognition, growth and interactions. 

Internet Today : No Wo(Man)'s Land

Men look at product specifications more than reviews before buying online. Women give reviews and usage examples a higher priority.

Men value the internet for the breadth of experience it offers. Women value it for enriching their relationships, and are also more concerned about its risks.

Internet was dominated by men in its early days. Over the years, women adjusted to experiences built by and for men; but as more women globally are coming online, the acute gap in products and services built exclusively for them, is starting to appear bigger and bigger.

Women need An Internet of their own, designed to suit their expectations and behaviour and cater to their needs in a manner which drives them the maximum value. Unfortunately, while global products are busy in scaling up, they’re still not focussing specifically on Women as a stand-alone target audience to build for.

Most products built for women are primarily based around either content or transactions, and while those serves isolated purposes, no product has built an end-to-end experience for them.

We are building SHEROES for women that live in middle and low income economies. These women have access to the internet but struggle to connect and utilise products and services online. They are looking for advice over a variety of issues related to health, childcare, business and financial empowerment. 

SHEROES offers through its network of communities and its platform information, advice, interactions, sharing, counseling and transactions across a range of communities. 

The core USP of SHEROES is being a safe, high trust, high empathy space for women, where they can have conversations, interactions and transactions as per their aspirations. Women on SHEROES are aspirational - they use the platform to acquire information, share their ideas, ask questions, meet other women, offer their products and services, use network resources, use utilities - all with a feeling of confidence and care. 

Communities and Interests

Communities are the backbone of the SHEROES platform. SHEROES is designed as a network of community - based on interest, aspiration and interaction of the user. Women in India have done very well in communities offline - this is a native behavior and now that women are connected online - it is being reflected online as well. Community behaviour allows women to bring all of their lives together - work, play, support. They depend on their tribe to move forward in their lives. 

Communities on SHEROES are designed as a micro-app - a customizable (via the platform) group depending on the use cases and UI preference. Each community has a feed, leaderboard and an ability to add any tab / API or code embeds. 

Each community is an interest based cohort, where members interested in that space may join and interact. Most communities may be classified as - Counseling (advice), Creativity (Showcase - share - learn) and Commerce (related to work, employment, gigs, earning). 

Some of the counseling communities are - Love, Parenting, Career, Legal and Health. 

Creative communities include - Travel, Writing, Cooking, Learning English, Fashion, Makeup etc. 

Commerce communities are represented by - Bazaar, Women in tech, Starting up, Work from home and Women in corporate India. 

“Invite-only communities”,are a closed space on SHEROES for all the women who would want to have focused discussions with like-minded people. Anybody on the platform can create these communities. 

Guest & Partner communities 

Communities hosted by other organizations working offline with women, women specific brands on SHEROES. SHEROES Communities are their online space to interact and evangelise.

SHEROES visualises itself as a central player in women’s internet - We are a full stack ecosystem of use cases that are women focussed and growing at a very fast pace. 

We are building end to end experiences for women via communities. We are adding a commerce layer to the social fabric that exists in our online interactions. 

SHEROES tech stack is a mix of solid backend, AI and ML models and platform play. 

As a core tech company, tech is our main investment and focus area and our shipping standards are pretty world class. 

SHEROES prides itself in understanding its women user. As women bring an increasing number of their activities on SHEROES, we will be developing utilities that cater to women-only demographic including period tracker, child vaccination and growth tracker, remote gigs for women, etc. to build deeper use cases. We will investing building analytics to personalise these experiences for women. 

SHEROES provides a safe, non-judgemental space for women to ask, connect, learn and grow. Women bring their real selves in every community. More than 96% of the women share their profile pictures on SHEROES and less than 2% post anonymously. 

We have seen women gaining confidence about themselves as they transition from passive consumption to active participation in each of the communities. As the connect with more women and interact on the platform, they are rewarded with badges and to conduct interactive sessions on app. These hyperactive users or SuperSHEROES have grown multifold over the past one year. Over 800 of these women have also created their own communities that collectively engage over 200K women. Their own communities are spaces where they share skills, pursue causes and set online shops. 

AskSHEROES Helpline, a 24x7 one on one counselling service, serves women across 250+ locations in the world. About 2 million queries have been answered over since 2017. These provide personal, relationship, career and financial advice to women, making it their first point of contact for any challenges they may be facing. 

We are currently connected to over 15 Million Women across the SHEROES Platform. 

We are working to serve 40 Million women over the next year and 500 Million over the next 5 years. 

Goals for 2020 

• Deliver personalised and contextual SHEROES Experience across 17 Indian and International Languages 
• Create more dense graphs 
• Product Integrations for Women specific applications via SHEROES Gender Verified Login and SDKs
• Build power user engine across economies 
• Expand international partnerships with women only organisations

Goals for 2024

• Enable end to end Social Commerce for Women 
• Hyperlocal services 

Cultural Challenges : Need for Women Only Product 

SHEROES is a unique solution in the market. We are reimagining the internet for women. Hence, the challenges faced are unique too including the need to address the women demographic specifically. It is critical to effectively define value and the economical benefits to closing the gender gap for businesses. 

Financial Challenges : With over 90% of organic adoption of the product, we have built communities and health tools for women. We wish to scale from 15 Million to the next 100 Million, we wish to invest in developing brand SHEROES, acquiring more users and deep tech to personalise experience for users

Legal Challenges : We hope to expand our reach through local women centric partners and content creators in developing economies including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia. Finding and setting up talent and centres will be a major challenge as we scale. 

Cultural Challenges : Need for Women Only Product 

- Building Brand SHEROES : Partnerships with popular women influencers such as Serena Williams, Sunita Williams who have overcome women stereotypes to build a strong women narrative 

- Publishing Partnerships : With over 15 Million Women on SHEROES, we have deeper insights on women behaviour online. Collaboration on translating  research and academic outcomes into economical benefits with local and international telecom, internet organisations (Eg :IAMAI, GSMA etc.) will allow us a greater reach with businesses around the world to weave the women internet story more deeply. 

Financial Challenges

- Equity Financing

Legal Challenges  

- Network of partners and existing investors

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We are a team of over 100 members working full time and remotely across India.

Sairee Chahal

Founder, CEO SHEROES, Aspen Fellow

Aspen Leadership Fellow and a serial entrepreneur, iInspired by the #TakeCharge women she meets everyday.  

Avinash Hindupur 

Co-Founder and CPO, SHEROES.

An IIT Alumnus, he has been named 1 of 7 Machine Learning experts from India and 44 from Asia.

Unny Radhakrishnan 

Chief Business Officer

Unny has over two decades of experience in Marketing Communications, Digital Media & Marketing, and Technology. Prior to SHEROES, he was the Chief Digital Officer at Wavemaker part of WPP, where he spent more than a decade.

John Paul

Product Head 

An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), John founded Maya with the mission to transform women’s health using technology. Products conceptualised and developed by John has won national and international recognition including Facebook FbStart App of the Year 2017 and Best Designed Product (NASSCOM Product Conclave 2014)

Satyadeep Karnati 

CTO

He has 8+ years experience in building consumer software products. Co-founder and CTO of Babygogo, a parenting app, acquired by SHEROES. 

Dr. Aditi Sabnis

Director of Empathy 

Dr Adi was a part of the MIT Media Labs Design Innovation course leading to work on protocols in Gender Spectrum and Sexual Spectrum Counselling and additional education in rehabilitation systems. 

We work with over 300 partners in the Women Only space leveraging our community, champion and helpline framework. They include Women's Cricket, Manndeshi Foundation, Milaan, Teach for India etc. 

- Community : Partners can create their own communities on SHEROES. This gives them a space to collaborate, share, drive awareness, sell tech products  and services and connect to a women audience. 

- Champions : They often include women entrepreneurs looking to build a brand amongst a women only audience. SHEROES gives them a space for detailed feedback and deeper insights for their business. Champions may also include local and national publishers that are wish to connect to women only audience. 

- AskSHEROES Helpline : This is deeply leveraged by NGOs and initiatives driving impact in remote areas of the country or underprivileged sections of the society. SHEROES is able to provide personal and emotional health counselling and support to these women

SHEROES monetizes via:

1. Brand Partnerships - Helping brands build narratives for women

2. SHEROES for Business Services - Deploying women workforce via SHEROES platform and offering diversity services to corporates. 
   

We intend to build SHEROES over the next 5 years as we scale our users as well as solving for multiple business models. The first 2 years will look at equity, debt financing through investors, seed funds and grants. 

Once we reach 30 Million users, we intend to launch Peer-to-Peer commerce on the platform. We will enable the social layer over transactions. A trust score which is based on a woman's behaviour online will bring trust and authenticity to sellers online. We expect this to open multiple revenue streams over the course of 5 years including 

- Financial Products for Women (Credit and Insurance)

- Women's Health and Support (Health Utilities for Women as Online Medical Data for Users)

- Funding & Incubation : Equity Financing for small women centric businesses 

- Gig Platform for Women : A market place for businesses and users to post and complete flexible jobs 

MIT Solve as an initiative brings a pedigree of investors, knowledge and industry experts. With a strong focus on solving the world problems, it has been supportive of numerous such initiatives. 

At SHEROES, we are looking to engage with knowledge experts for exchange over the following challenges

- Deep data and tech experts capabilities to scale power users  across economies 

- Access to pool of talent for content, building local partnerships partnerships in international markets

- Connect and explore collaborations with local govt organisations and major women initiatives 

Scope for Partnerships 

• Universities and Thought centres : To understand and exchange knowledge about women behaviour online and building health utilities for women 

• Women Only Initiatives/Govt Bodies in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil to launch content and helpline partnerships 

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