Out with handshakes, in with AI: Unikon.ai’s case for earning by networking

Here’s a bitter truth: Networking is hard. 

Whether you are a business owner or climbing up the corporate ladder, building relationships can often be challenging. Cold emails are often left unread, messages ignored on LinkedIn, and meetings mostly often just end with a handshake.

Serial entrepreneur Aakash Anand, Founder of D2C brand Bella Vita Organic and proptech startup PropKaro, faced this problem firsthand. 

“While building my startups, I realised I was the least networked founder in the industry. Business development is such a massive use case where people spend time, money, or fuel on cold calls and cold visits,” Anand tells YourStory. 

Anand, who has scaled multiple businesses including Bevzilla, BetterAlt, and GNC as a Partner at Ananta Capital, teamed up with SaaS startup Zecpe’s CTO Sumit Jha and chartered accountant Palash Arneja to solve for networking. They built Unikon.ai in 2023 as an AI/ML-based peer-to-peer networking platform to help users connect with advisors or professionals for advice, and in turn, enables experts to share knowledge and earn. 

“We thought of creating a platform where users get paid for their time and knowledge. It can be a founder trying to seek guidance from industry peers, or individuals dealing with anxiety to gain support from professionals,” the co-founder adds. 

Solving the problem of access

Addressing the pain points of networking, Unikon.ai aims to solve one of the main challenges of making new connections: access to networking opportunities. 

“Unikon stands for ‘you and I connect’. It is an open-source platform where we have taken away the problem of access. Each user maintains a personal profile with customisable rates for audio calls, video calls, or direct messages. Based on these rates and their professional background, users can connect with others for video calls, audio calls, or chats within 24-48 hours, or instantly," Anand explains. 

Users can type their query to find sector experts through AI search, and then make an instant call or book their time to discuss personal and professional matters. The queries can range from simply learning how to cook to enquiring about skills required to be a coder.

The Gurugram-based startup focuses on making connections rewarding by enabling individuals who have "been there and done that" or “presently doing it” to offer advice. They can organise events such as webinars or workshops, and share expertise to earn income. 

Unified platform for networking

The platform has been built using Flutter, a tool by Google that lets developers create apps for both Android and iOS with a single codebase.

“We are utilising the latest technologies for development. Our AI model is currently in the training phase, supported by a dedicated tech team of around 25 members, even before the official launch,” Arneja, COO and Co-founder of Unikon.ai, tells YourStory. The company’s total headcount is 50.

The platform offers four main features: UniShorts, UniKonnect, UniSeek, and UniShows. 

Taking a leaf out of the playbook of social media giants, UniShorts allows professionals to post smaller, concise videos, giving a glimpse of their 1:1 sessions. These act as quick and engaging short clips or previews to help experts build their brands.

Further, Unikon’s AI engine recommends these videos based on interests and expertise to get quick insights and connect with peers for more in-depth discussions. Other users can like, react, or comment on these videos and share them on social media. 

Meanwhile, UniKonnect’s AI-powered discovery engine lets users find and connect with the right individuals from over 3,000 experts on the platform using specific filters like location, company, experience, availability, ratings, age range, gender, and more. One can use filters to find individuals who are instantly available, top-rated, or match specific criteria.

Thirdly, the UniSeek feature enables users to post their queries in a video format and seek personalised responses, earn by solving queries of other uses, or even promote job opportunities. The startup claims to have more than 100 open queries already on the app.

UniShows are live, interactive ‘one-to-many’ sessions where users can host or attend events on a variety of topics. Users can host and earn to create a UniShow, which will be recommended by AI to relevant individuals to register. 

“We are an open marketplace for all fields, but our current focus is on professional connections (which include all the fields and departments), jobs and careers, and mental health,” Arneja says.

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Funding and future plans

In June this year, the startup raised $2 million in seed round led by Ananta Capital, along with a notable group of entrepreneurs including Nikhil Kamath (Zerodha), Peyush Bansal (Lenskart), Vishesh Khurana (Shiprocket), Dholakia Ventures, Nitin Jain and Vasant Sridhar (OfBusiness), and Gaurav Khatri (Noise).

Notably, several influencers including Tanmay Bhat, Raj Shamani, Arjun Vaidya, Sharan Hegde (Finance with Sharan), Ganeshprasad S (Think School), Shlok Srivastava (Tech Burner), and Rahul Malodia have backed Unikon.ai. 

Currently, the company operates in India and plans to launch in the US within three months. 

“We are trying to create a marketplace where we people can set their own rates. Users can connect with the right individuals based on reviews, ratings, or curated feeds," Palash explains.

Unikon.ai generates revenue by taking 20% of revenue from the transactions occurring on the platform. 

All the content on the app is free. Users can watch all the sessions, both long format and short format. However, connecting with people is a paid feature. Users are free to set their hourly rates for audio/video calls and chats. Based on these rates, others can book their time, with the option for pro-rated bookings as well.

The platform has onboarded more than 10,000 users and plans to reach one million users by the end of this financial year. The startup also plans to include new features to enhance the user experience. 

“We don't want to compete with Meta or LinkedIn. We want to use those platforms to build ours. We are there to complement them and are a socio-professional marketplace. We are providing a unique solution to a problem faced by millions of people,” Arneja says. 

“Globally, there are startups focused on the top 1% or niche categories, but no one has attempted to achieve this on the scale that we are planning,” he notes.