India AI influencer firm enters Dubai amid marketing goldrush

KlugKlug also hopes to disrupt the influencer marketing segment with its tech-based platform which will help companies to weed out the large-scale ‘fake followers’ of social media influencers.

“While influencer marketing is fast emerging as the latest and most effective tool in customer acquisition by companies and brands, the catch is: Are they spending it right?,” Kalyan Kumar, co-founder and CEO of KlugKlug, told Arabian Business.

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“Our tech and data-based analysis shows a significant part of the followers – as much as up to 70 percent in some cases – of the social media influencers are fake – or bots as they are described in the tech parlance,” Kumar said.

KlugKlug’s AI-powered influencer marketing platform

KlugKlug’s UAE entry plans follow MAD Influence, another leading India-based global influencer marketing company, announcing plans to launch an ‘Uber type’ platform for influencer marketing in the country.

Kumar said KlugKlug’s SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform for influencer marketing works like an X-ray for any brand for any influencer marketing outreach.

“With a databank of millions of profile insights of influencers and an AI-ML-led data platform for influencer marketing discovery that are accurate up to 85 percent, KlugKlug can provide the most comprehensive and reliable global influencer intelligence, discovery, and insights on social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok,” Kumar said.

He said if a celebrity female influencer works for, say, a brand like L’Oreal and if a vast majority of her social media followers are males, the campaign will not yield any tangible results for the brand.

“That’s where we step in. Our platform can identify not only whether a follower is a genuine one or fake, but can also identify almost every aspect of his or her profile, enabling brands and companies to do ‘precision shooting’ with their influencer marketing campaigns,” Kumar said.

He said the platform has about 130 million social media user data and can search for follower profiles in any nook and corner of the world.

“Our estimate is that this helps companies to save 20 to 40 percent of their investments in social media influencer marketing,” he said.

Considering the millions of dollars spent by some of the corporate biggies on their various influencer marketing campaigns, this will be a huge saving, the KlugKlug chief executive said.

On the company’s foray into the Middle East, Kumar said they will be setting up an office in Dubai in the current quarter.

“We are currently in the process of building up the team for our Middle East operations, and later on will expand the team in Dubai to take care of our ambitious international expansions,” he said.

Industry observers said the rush by India-based ventures to enter the UAE and the larger Middle East region come as the region is currently seeing a surge in demand for influencer marketing, with companies in several sectors, including fashion, lifestyle, consumer products and real estate, taking to this new mode of customer acquisition in a big way.

Kumar also revealed that the company is close to finalising deals with a leading e-commerce group and another e-commerce luxury company in the UAE for influencer marketing projects.

He also said the company is in talks with some of the leading international and regional agencies working in the Middle East for collaboration projects in influencer marketing.

“We work with agencies to have optimum impact – while agencies have a number of social media influencers working for them, our tech-enabled approach helps to identify and reach the precise target groups for brands. This is a win-win situation for all,” Kumar said.