Roposo plays a live commerce game in InMobi's playground

Roposo, a short video app that runs on InMobi's lock screen platform Glance, recently cancelled the contracts of some of the platform's top influencers. But why? Because it's pivoting to live commerce, and that resets the board for all stakeholders

Short video app Roposo is turning to the US$60-billon live commerce space, hoping to monetise the platform

Roposo’s Shop 101 platform will connect creators with brands while providing resources for influencers to sell products on Roposo

It aspires to scale the model globally—especially in mobile-first Southeast Asia—but that’s an uphill task as more competitors circle in

InMobi, though, is pinning hopes on the synergy of live commerce content with its lock screen service Glance, which has 150 million users

“1 shirt, 5 skirts”

That’s the caption on the video I’m watching. The creator, Kiki, snaps her fingers and her skirts change. But Kiki is not an Instagram fashion influencer sporting looks from her latest haul; she’s actually selling these products live, and the video I’m watching has a link that takes me directly to her store.

The platform is Roposo, and its format, akin to short video apps like TikTok, has a very un-TikTok-like quality to it. It’s getting people like Kiki to engage in live commerce.

Roposo, launched in 2014 as a short video app, was acquired by InMobi’s Glance in 2019. Mobile adtech company InMobi’s Glance—which we’ve written about written about The Ken With Glance, InMobi wants to rule Android’s screens Read more before—brings a user’s lock screen to life. The service—which comes pre-installed in new Android-run phones from brands such as Xiaomi, POCO, Samsung, Vivo and Oppo—last month launched Glance Live for live commerce, among other things.

Look Here

Glance replaces the default lock screen of an Android phone with dozens of interactive content screens—crafted by a few hundred of InMobi’s staff—with software algorithms then deciding what content to show which user

Glance hit 150 million active users in India in the second quarter of 2021, with “one in four Indian smartphone users” active on the platform, read a recent report recent report Counterpoint Research Glance Active User Base in India Crosses 150-mn Milestone Read more from market research company Counterpoint Research. And these 150 million are the potential buyers for creators like Kiki, who sell on Roposo.

No wonder the company is pivoting. On 13 October, Roposo’s app underwent a redesign to turn its focus to live commerce over short videos. “We have all seen how content itself has evolved, from text to images to long-form video with YouTube to short form with TikTok; and we feel that live is the next frontier for content altogether. Glance wants to own that space potentially,” says Piyush Shah, co-founder of InMobi and president of Glance.

What inspired the short video app—which currently has a 30-million-strong user base in India—to get into the business of selling consumer products via live streams? The short answer is money. The short video creator space can’t be monetised, but Roposo hopes live commerce can.

As for business-to-business (B2B) firm InMobi, the move helps solidify its business-to-consumer (B2C) play, where it already has made strides with Glance.

AUTHOR

Munsif Vengattil

Munsif keeps a tab on what Big Tech has been up to in India and all things OTT. He was with Reuters previously, where he wrote investigative pieces on Facebook’s content moderation operations and WhatsApp’s troubles in the run-up to India’s national elections. If you want to talk to Munsif about journalism, tech policy or his love for seekh kebabs, write to him at his first name @the-ken.com.

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