EXCLUSIVE: Creators of India’s first virtual influencer to launch new model with South Indian focus

TopSocial India, the agency behind the launch of India's first virtual influencer model Kyra, is rolling out a new model Sravya to focus on the South Indian market today.

Sravya will have a polyglot persona and will be able to converse with her audiences in several languages, including Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada. She will play the role of Kyra's manager and is set to have her own Instagram page. "To us it made sense... if Kyra is a virtual influencer then her manager should also be virtual," Himanshu Goel, Business Head of TopSocial India, tells YourStory.

With Sravya, the focus is on targeting audiences in the South Indian region. Her origin story will include that she is from Palakkad in Kerala. "There is a huge interest in the South Indian market... it is a market that loves technology as is evident from their movies that use a lot of CGI. So it is natural that they will also have a social media online in terms of CGI," he says.

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According to Himanshu, the agency has already mapped out a plan for five more characters and will begin introducing them in a phased manner.

Since her launch in May, Kyra, TopSocial India's first virtual influencer project, has grown from having 15,000 followers on Instagram to over 201,000 followers as of December. She was also the first virtual influencer to collaborate with brands like boAt and Amazon Prime. The company hopes Kyra will overtake imma, an influencer based in Japan who currently has 400,000 followers on the platform.

Virtual influencers have been all the rage recently. A 2022 virtual influencers survey conducted by the Influencer Marketing Factory revealed that 58% of respondents follow at least one virtual influencer and 35% of consumers said they had purchased a product promoted by a virtual influencer.