Driving impact via YourStory Connect: a product that enables connections for startups and changemakers

With over 120 K+ stories told so far, we at Yourstory have spent our time building and fostering large communities of entrepreneurs, investors, thought leaders and pioneers of India’s burgeoning startup and business environment. Simultaneously, our reader base has also grown into a swelling community that is as vibrant and diverse as the changemakers we write about.

So, earlier in 2020, we asked ourselves, what can we do to help our community of readers directly engage and connect with our diverse community of startup founders? And more importantly, how can we create impact at scale for entrepreneurs beyond the stories that enable discovery and branding for their businesses?

Enter YourStory Connect -- a unique product by YourStory that allows our readers and ecosystem stakeholders to directly connect with each other in a more meaningful and contextual way.

Impact of YourStory Connect 

Launched as a pilot project in October 2020, the YourStory Connect feature (currently in beta) has been received with much enthusiasm and has already created tangible impact for its users. Each month, YourStory Connect enables well over 1,000 Connects, for a variety of reasons, including business partnerships, fundraising or investing, hiring, product inquiries, among others. 

Take the case of Groovy Juices -- a brand that sells juice packs for Rs 10 in Tier II and Tier III cities as well as rural areas across North India. Founded in 2019 by brothers Mitkaran Singh and Rajneesh Sharma, Groovy Juices had sold over 1.5 crore juice packs in just one year by following a purely offline sales model. In fact, when YourStory had profiled their startup journey, the brothers were looking to expand their business across rural and semi-urban regions in the country. 

When our readers discovered this affordable juice brand through YourStory, over 117 people used the YourStory Connect feature embedded in the article to reach out to the founders of Groovy Juices; out of these, 65 were interested in entering into business partnerships, including exporting and distributing their products as well as setting up their own Groovy Juices franchises. These requests came in from across India, right from towns in Odisha and Chhattisgarh to local markets in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and other states.

Other interesting findings:

Besides Groovy Juices, other startups such as CropIn, Nimble Growth, Edumpus, Rise Hydroponics, Simple Energy, and hundreds more have started seeing YourStory Connect requests flowing in.

• Nimble Growth: With over 175+ connects, a lot of farmers reached out to Nimble growth for organic solutions

• Euphotic Labs : Euphotic Lab attained validation with a lot of pre-orders and support from users and business owners

• Vocab Guru : Students and professionals learned about vocab guru and reached out to improve their english skills

• CropIn : Farmers across India reached out to CropIn to grow their business with the guidance from CropIn's expertise

• Rise Hydroponics : Land owners across india connected to Rise Hydroponics for setting up facilities in their farm

Over 1000 students and working professionals are also using YourStory Connect to reach out to startups and businesses they are keen to work in. Other reasons for using Connect include potential investments in the featured startup, strategic partnerships, or to just spread the love with a simple, congratulatory message for the founders.

How to use YourStory Connect feature

Now, as we ramp up our efforts to build and foster our rapidly-growing network of changemakers, we invite all of you to actively use and leverage YourStory Connect to reach out to those featured in our stories. In under a minute, you could be well on your way to connecting and engaging with the most disruptive startups and entrepreneurs.

Please refer to the video below for a visual representation of how to use our Connect feature:

If you have any questions or feedback about YourStory Connect, we’d love to hear from you. You can reach us at [email protected].