This new shopping app is exclusively for content creators on Instagram

Yash Kewalramani, Samarth Mahapatra and Sharnam Singhwal

It's the era of Gen Z entrepreneurs - we are just living in it. Armed with tech, three twenty-somethings have launched a niche app, proving this is the way forward. In a world where even underwear can be delivered in 10 minutes, what more could e-commerce do? Perhaps offer discounts and cashback that users would want to download the app for.

Riding on the notion that everyone loves a good deal, Cherry launched in October 2024. The app is exclusively for content creators on Instagram. Your followers are all the currency you need to get access to shop on the app. How it works? The app scans your Instagram profile. The first criterion: You need to have a public account with over 1,000 followers. Second, once you shop, you need to post about the brand on your account and tag the brand. Upload screenshots of the post and your bill to the app, and you get cash back. Who could have thought that empowering nano influencers with tech was possible?

All this was made possible once Samarth Mahapatra, Yash Kewalramani, and Sharnam Singhwal came together. The three met while working as product managers at Jupiter, the digital banking platform. And, the insights acquired at the job were enough inspiration to head out and work on something they could call their own. "I was working on the rewards team specifically and I figured out that people go to great lengths to actually save money on their expenses. I could see that people were fighting for 10-20 rupees and spending a lot of time trying to get that cash back," says Mahapatra, adding that it gave them the confidence they needed to design Cherry's USP.

The second source of inspiration to make this a creators-only app was by decoding their own Instagram engagement. Working in Bengaluru, the three would often go for a drink at a local bar. Posting stories on their social media accounts would usually garner a lot of attention from followers, who began finding a place "cool" to hang out at, based on Instagram stories that they saw the three post. "We realised that convincing someone what is nice or what is not nice is possible on Instagram. So, we concluded that relatable influencers could drive decisions or, let's say, influence people to go to a certain place," says Singhwal. It's also why Cherry first offered discounts at restaurants, cafes, and bars, but gradually switched to beauty and fashion brands.

We discovered Cherry while doom-scrolling on Instagram. Simply talking to the camera, Kewalramani is the face that speaks on the brand's account. Their views on Instagram are rising, so much so that their app downloads have spiked and even resulted in an app crash last week. "We had set a limit for the number of requests per minute at around 150. Once one of our videos went viral, after two hours of that video being released, the number of active users went up to 10,000. On average, that number used to be 12," explains Singhwal. Normally, an app crush would worry new founders, but 10,000 hits per minute is not a small number. "It was the luckiest and honestly the happiest we've ever been," adds Singhwal.

For nano influencers, Cherry's model allows them to start building a portfolio to work with big-ticket brands in the future. On the other end, naturally, brands are happy. It's influencer marketing without the woes of spending lakhs, and dealing with agencies.

Cherry has only 35-40 brands listed on their app so far, including Pant Project, Hibiscus Monkey, Kitsters, Inde Wild, TYPE Beauty, Snitch, and New Me, among others. For direct-to-consumer brands that are homegrown in India, Cherry could be a life-saver. However, many brands are still on the waitlist. "We have a long waitlist, especially since the last few weeks. The reason we haven't converted our waitlist is because we want to curate it, which is why we've been very strict about who we are listing, especially in the early days," says Kewalramani.

But is exclusive shopping the way forward, and why is an app targeting creators or influencers alone? "The convenience part of e-commerce is becoming more and more saturated with more and more players in the market. What I feel is an app, like CRED, but for shoppers or influencers is the future of e-commerce wherein you have influential people purchasing from brands, and brands shifting their entire brand marketing spend to this," explains Mahapatra. A quick Google search will explain to you how members-only apps are the future. And, possibly a trend that we are going to see more of in 2025. As these apps offer convenience, personalisation and engagement, more users are likely to switch to such apps.

Post an app crash, a spike in downloads and users, and a waitlist full of exciting brands, the three founders are tweaking their code. They have switched from manually approving users to automating the process, and have also managed to raise an angel round of funding. The near future seems to have a lot of work in store, but the three are already dreaming of going global someday. "It's time we see an app from India for the world," concludes Mahapatra.