YoMacha: India’s Hot or Not ?

A few days back I had received a ‘profiling’ request from Vandana Makharia from YoMacha. A brief look at YoMacha tells you that it isn’t exactly a run-of-the mill social networking portal with typical Web2.0 features. What’s really encouraging to see is that it is an internet startup from a non-metro. Operating from Jaipur, YoMacha is an inspiration for wannabe entrepreneurs from other towns and districts.

“What is YoMacha ?

Yo Macha! is an internet startup from Jaipur and has been launched with a concept of rating pictures of people or users themselves. YoMacha users can also create their own RATING WAR where one can create a popularity/non-popularity poll between any two given topics that can be thought off.” 

What does YoMacha mean ?

Macha means ‘a friend’ in South Indian. therefore Yo-Macha!

What’s the Idea ?

Key philosophy behind YoMacha was to start a website based on something that everybody seems fixated with, Being a bunch of youngsters we could not help but feel the over existence of ‘looks’ in our peers and day to day life. Does not mean we want to judge anything, we just took it as concept and played on it.

YoMacha is not some pathbreaking idea on net. But we have carried on this idea of Rating further for fun/entertainment/timepass and created a place where users can find something new and interesting everyday.

Founder

The founder of the company is Ajit Nawalkha, a 24 yr old graduate ! He already has good experience of working with Youth Organizations, events and Media. Wanting to start something of own, convinced some investors and went on creating a team and the company.

Target Audience

The target audience is from 15-30 years of age group, youngsters who spend a lot of time on net and need a break and some thing fun and exciting to do, or when one is generally getting bored. Basically Teenagers, Grad/PG, Young Professionals.

YoMacha v/s Hotornot

• not a dating site
• inclusion of Rating wars, which are attract a major chunk of our traffic.
• specifically catering to Indians and not just ‘Desi Indians’

Distinct Features

• Its very specific to Indian Netizens, other such successful sites are only found overseas.
• Clean and safe, Every word for public eye goes through moderation. While going through the initial research we bumped into few Indian rating sites, which did not take care of person’s privacy and safety. They had profane content. Probably the reason they did not last long.
• Rating Wars, if a person gets bored of rating pictures, he/she can switch to some interesting videos, pictures, blogs etc in the form of polls.
• Soon we would be introducing rating in more forms.

Revenue model

• Revenue sharing tie ups with SMS service provider, Accessory Providers etc
• Low cost Banner Advertisements (Local/National)
• Generating traffic for CPC/CPM based ads.