Crowdfire’s Unique Idea to Handle Social Media – A Digital Manager in your Pocket
Crowdfire is a social media management tool for users to increase engagement and build platforms. Anirudh Khusape, Nischal Shetty, Sameer Mhatre, and Siddharth Menon invented Crowdfire in 2010 in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
Crowdfire is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) social media management app founded in 2010 as “JustUnfollow” before being rebranded in 2015. Anirudh Khusape, Nischal Shetty, Sameer Mhatre, and Siddharth Menon invented Crowdfire, based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Crowdfire helps people discover and schedule content and manage all their social media accounts from one place. Their mentions feature has helped people significantly increase their engagement rates. Their analytics are very detailed, and it’s one of the only affordable social media management tools on the market right now. Crowdfire has premium as well as freemium subscription plans. It is currently looking to introduce enterprise plans soon.
Fun Fact : While being bootstrapped for five years, the start-up racked up over ten million users.
Crowdfire Startup - Key Points
- Legal Name - Crowdfire India Pvt. Ltd.
- Also known as - JustUnfollow (Rebranded circa 2015)
- CIN - U72300MH2014PTC260125
- Founded - February 2010
- Founders - Anirudh Khusape, Nischal Shetty, Sameer Mhatre, Siddharth Menon
- Headquarters - Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
- Industry - social media, Marketing, Software
- Financing status - Venture capital-backed
- Last Funding Type - Series A
- Total Revenue - $1.74M in the CY2018
- Products/ Services - Social media management software
- Company Type - Private, Non-Govt; For Profit
- Website - www.crowdfireapp.com
Crowdfire Startup - Founder(s) & Team
- Sameer Mhatre An alumnus of Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Engineering and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
- Siddharth Menon An alumnus of the University of Mumbai
- Anirudh Khusape A co-founder of Crowdfire, he worked with them until 2018. He is now the COO of JioGenNext.
- Nischal Shetty He is an alumnus of Visvesvaraya Technological University. Nischal Shetty, Sameer Mhatre, and Siddharth Menon created the cryptocurrency platform WazirX (Zanmai Labs Pvt. Ltd.), India’s largest crypto exchange.
Crowdfire : Features
- Article Curation
- Customize RSS Feed
- Image Curation
- Curate from a blog or e-commerce store
- Publish everywhere - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest
- Schedule in advance
- Tailored posts with preview
- Automatic + Custom best times to post
- Queue Meter
- Report builder
- Advanced Analytics
- Competitor Analysis
- Analytics Overview
Crowdfire : Brand name
Initially called JustUnfollow, they reimagined the brand in 2015 to become Crowdfire. JustUnfollow was a product built on Twitter that allowed users to know things like who unfollowed them, the spammers following them, and more such curiosity quenching features. But now – as Crowdfire – they offer a more comprehensive range of features such as an Instagram scheduler and photo suggester.
Crowdfire : Competitors
- Hootsuite
- Buffer
- Sprout Social
- ManageFlitter
- Sendible
- ZohoSocial
- Agorapulse
- Tweetdeck
- Sprinklr Modern Sales & Engagement
- Facebook Pages Manager
Fun Fact: Crowdfire is available in eight languages; Arabic, English, French, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Turkish!
Crowdfire Startup - Awards and Achievements
- Crozdeck 2021 - Quality Choice Award
- Crozdeck 2021 - Trusted Vendor Award
- Crozscore : Top Social Media Software Awards in 2017 - #11
Crowdfire Business Models – Freemium & Premium
Crowdfire combines both a freemium business model as well as a subscription business model. A freemium model is when the customer has a certain level of access to the application or tool suite. However, certain essential features are withheld or limited, and to access those features, the client must pay for a subscription. As a subscription model, they require that the client or customer pay a recurring payment monthly (or another specified timeframe) for access to those services or products.
Crowdfire is a freemium software, which means it offers a free plan and three other premium plans : Plus, Premium, and VIP.
Crowdfire : Funding & Investors
Crowdfire has raised a total of $2.5 million in funding over one round.
| Date | Stage | Amount | No. of Investors | Lead Investors |
| March 9, 2015 | Series A | $2.5M | 1 | Kalaari Capital |
Crowdfire : Growth and Revenue
Crowdfire’s revenue for the Calendar Year 2018 stood at $1.74M, down from $2.11M in 2017. Over ten million clients (big and small, entrepreneurs, indie artists, individuals) use Crowdfire, of which over 350,000 users are active daily and three million actives monthly.
Crowdfire : Criticism
The start-up has a reputation for sending droves of “spam” mail without an option to unsubscribe or opt-out. This sentiment seems to be the most widely accepted negative perspective of Crowdfire. As a result, the start-up might consider keeping a check on their practices.
Crowdfire : Challenges
Most people are slow to adopt Software as a Service in any industry in India, and the number of paying customers is dismal. The problem is the pricing, and there is a price war in progress for customer acquisition. So, no one makes money on their service, while the marketing costs are high.
Further, social media applications like Twitter have cut off API (application programming interfaces) access, causing certain features of Crowdfire and similar applications to cease functionality.
Crowdfire : Best Social Media Management Indian Tool
Essentially, Crowdfire finds inactive users, un-followers, and relevant users to unfollow or follow using their insightful “Copy Followers” feature. They keep track of how social media updates affect a person’s follower and un-follower stats, check the relationship between any two Twitter/Instagram accounts and do a whole lot more.