Success Story of POPxo: Beauty, Fashion, and Lifestyle Community For Women

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by POPxo.

POPxo is India's largest online community for millennial women to read, watch, purchase, and hang out, which was founded in 2015. POPxo brings a welcoming and empowering environment that encourages women to live their best lives.

POPxo is aimed to merge content and commerce, which started as content and eventually had its own private label brand. POPxo's articles, videos, and social networking material are in six languages - English, Hindi, Marathi, Bangla, Tamil, and Telugu - which has attracted over 39 million monthly users who spend over 3 million hours across all of the company's platforms.

POPxo also partners with the leading companies to increase its reach and engage its audience. The whole platform runs on the basis of content that fascinates young girls. Furthermore, it also features on its website, Bollywood news, life hacks, retail listicles and more.

POPxo was acquired by MyGlamm's parent, The Good Glamm Group on August 7, 2020. The six-year-old company's investors - Chiratae Ventures, Kalaari Capital, and Neoplux Venture Capital have joined the board of MyGlamm soon after the acquisition. Furthermore, Priyanka Gill, the founder of POPxo also joined MyGlamm as a cofounder. Here's all about POPxo, its Founders and Team, Business Model, Revenue Model, Services, Funding, FAQs, and more.

POPxo - Company Highlights

Popxo - Latest News

January 24, 2022 - Popxo parent, The Good Glamm Group acquires Organic Harvest, a beauty and personal care D2C startup led by Rahul Agarwal.

October 1, 2021 - Popxo enters the Indian cosmetic industry with a Makeup Collection from Myglamm.

Popxo - About
Popxo - Industry
Popxo - Startup Story
Popxo - Founders and Team
Popxo - Mission and Vision
Popxo - Name, Tagline and Logo
Popxo - Business Model
Popxo - Revenue Model
Popxo - Services
Popxo - Funding and Investors
Popxo - Growth
Popxo - Startup Challenges
Popxo - Competitors
Popxo - Future Plans
Popxo - FAQs

Popxo - About

POPxo has been founded in 2014 as India's largest online community for women that offers discussions, content, and products across a wide range of domains including fashion, beauty, lifestyle, work, and more. Founded by Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom, PopXo offers millennial women an excellent platform where they can read, watch, shop, and hang out. Along with exclusive products across brands, PopXo also offers text and video content in a manner that is accessible via social media on mobile and PCs across the web. PopXo has last reported having crossed the 9 million mark in terms of user acquisitions every month and has boasted of witnessing over 102 million monthly engaged content views.

Popxo was acquired by MyGlamm in August 2020 and has since served as a subsidiary of MyGlamm, which eventually turned into The Good Glamm Group in September 2021. The Popxo parent, MyGlamm includes The Moms Co, St Botanica and Sirona, along with other content platforms - POPxo, Scoopwhoop, and BabyChakra, as per January 2022's reports, and has already turned unicorn in November 2021, thereby being hailed as the first beauty commerce unicorn company of India.

Popxo - Industry

The Indian industry comprised of online personal care and beauty brands and products are estimated to reach $4.4 billion by 2025. There is also likely to be a 4X increase witnessed in the number of shoppers of beauty and personal care products online, which was last reported to be 25 million in FY20 and would be going up to 110 million in FY25.

Popxo - Startup Story

The Popxo is founded by two dynamic women - Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom. During 2012-13 there was no content platform at scale in English for women. So, this was the point when they thought of creating a useful platform for women and began Popxo in March 2013. Priyanka Gill first started Estylista in September 2013 in London for the NRI women, which is popularly known as the base of PopXo. For the first few years, the company started working out of London and raised its first institutional round of funding.

Initially, Popxo created content that enthused women who love to delve into fashion, beauty, lifestyle, wedding, relationships, work, fitness et cetera. The most popular things that attracted women to the Popxo website are hair and skin protection, and other products.

The greatness of the website lies in the production of 1500+ articles in six languages that the Popxo website was last recorded to be publishing every month. The team understood the audience well and presented articles in the same way, which lead to content creation to adding relevant videos. Today, the platform produces 60-70 videos a month and generates 100-150 million views a month. The duration of videos is between 3-7 minutes. Furthermore, they even produce web series.

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Popxo - Founders and Team

Priyanka Gill

Priyanka is the Co-Founder and President of MyGlamm and the Founder and CEO of POPxo and Plixxo. She lives in London with her husband and two children as a digital media entrepreneur and storyteller. She enjoys working with creative and entrepreneurial people, particularly women, and considers it a privilege to be in their company. She is now enrolled in a joint London Business School and Columbia Business School EMBA - Global program, said her Linkedin profile post dated May 24, 2021.

Her passion for writing merged with entrepreneurship when she started her own site, Estylista, which is now known as POPxo. She returned to India in 2014 to create POPxo, envisioning her company as a safe and engaging community that helps Indian women lead their lives. Influencer marketing seems to be on the verge of breaking out in India. As a result, she began developing a tech-enabled platform to take advantage of this enormous opportunity. Plixxo was released in 2017 and is powered by PopXo. It was here that India's first generation of influencers grew up. Priyanka Gill has experience serving as a freelance writer and editor and an investor and board member for several companies. She eventually served as an advisor at PolkaRare and a seed investor of Kalamint, a role that she is still continuing with. She co-founded The Good Glamm Group on Darpan Sanghvi and Naiyya Saggi in September 2021 initially with the merger of MyGlamm, PopXo, and BabyChakra.      

POPxo's Plixxo also joined MyGlamm, India's premier beauty conglomerate, in 2020, marking a watershed moment and a watershed year. Three powerful brands merged to form one incredible enterprise that goes by the name The Good Glamm, the parent company of MyGlamm in August 2020 and since then, Gill has been appointed as the Cofounder of the latter.

Namrata Bostrom was the co-founder of PopXo, who has also been the CEO of the company as well from the initial phase of the company and stepped down from the role in March 2017. Bostrom is an Economics student who has The University of Oxford and London Business School as her alma mater. Bostrom earlier served as a Consultant at The Boston Consulting Group, and as a Sales and Product Strategist at EDITED before co-founding PopXo. After leaving the role at PopXo, Namrata joined Facebook, the company that she is still aligned to as the Product Management Lead.

PopXo initially had a team of 15 people working together, which eventually grew to include more than 200 employees strong.  

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Popxo - Mission and Vision

PopXo's vision has always been "to build a content-community-commerce platform for women."

The mission of the company was to help the users find their inner natural glow. Now, as a part of The Good Glamm Group, PopXo's mission is aligned with the mission of its parent, which aims to build the global Digital FMCG Conglomerate of the Future.

Popxo - Name, Tagline and Logo

PopXo's tagline has said, 'Take it up a POP!' - and we live and breathe it with everything we do.

Popxo - Business Model

Popxo targets millennial women aged between 18-35 with a range of products across diverse industries including fashion, beauty, lifestyle, wedding, wellness, and entertainment. The company has recently forayed into the cosmetics industry. The social community platform for women has entered the cosmetics industry, which is currently valued at $20 billion with a Makeup Collection by MyGlamm. MyGlamm has acquired Popxo towards the end of last year, and this development has come almost a year after that.

This new makeup collection is termed POPxo Makeup Collection by MyGlamm and will include nail kits, face kits, eye kits, and lip kits in order to cater to all makeup needs. The entire range is reported to be priced under Rs 499 per product in an effort to stay within the affordable limits for younger women. The Popxo Makeup Collection powered by MyGlamm will be sold on the MyGlaam app and website along with being available at popular company stores and kiosks across the country.

Popxo - Revenue Model

Sponsored content is the initial source of revenue. The company approaches brands and claim to have a large audience. Popxo knows what people want and can assist you in selling. The company made content for them, including social media and video content. That comes first while influencer marketing comes in second. Ads come in third, and e-commerce comes in fourth.

Popxo’s money comes from sponsored material, which accounts for half of our total. Influencer marketing accounts for 40% of income. They started selling online in the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year.

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Popxo - Services

• Fashion- POPxo allows you to stay up to speed on the latest fashion trends by reading fashion articles and watching videos. Thefashion experts of the company provide the users with everything they need to stay on-trend, from styling advice to shopping hotspots and must-have items. The platform also offers the latest news on fashion in both western and Indian. It also provides the best tips and fashion hacks that suit you. This platform also offers the latest updates on celebrity attires (both Bollywood and Hollywood).
• Beauty- The team of beauty specialists is committed to providing the users with the best services available in the industry. The beauty section has it all, from unbiased product reviews to makeup hacks to skin and hair care advice. The users get updates on skincare, makeup, hair, bath & body, nails, hair products, beauty products and DIYs.
• Lifestyle- POPxo also offers related content from a wide range of topics. It provides the consumers with popular articles across all categories, from travel and education to sex and relationships.
• Wedding- Wedding planning can be as stressful as you imagine, which is why Popxo is also there to assist. The wedding area keeps young brides-to-be up to date on the latest trends. POPxo has all you need to know about weddings, from bridal makeup to honeymoon ideas.
• Wellness- Overall wellness, according to POPxo, is at the heart of a healthy lifestyle. So, if the consumers want to live a healthier life, check out Popxo’s wellness section which has articles on managing stress and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
• Entertainment- Popxo will make sure the users get the best of everything from the comfort of their homes on laptops or mobile phones, from movie recommendations to what's going on in the lives of their favorite celebrity.

Popxo is home to all feminine things. POPxo's online store, which includes items such as home decor, beauty, clothes, face masks, mobile accessories, stationery, rakhi presents, and more, is an attempt to make online shopping for women in India more enjoyable!

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Popxo - Funding and Investors

POPxo has raised a total funding of $12.4M in over 7 rounds of funding. POPxo is funded by 21 investors. Neoplux, IDG Ventures, Summit Media, Oppo, Kalaari Capital, STRIVE, Chiratae Ventures are the lead investors of POPxo.

Popxo - Growth

PopXo grew considerably with a well-knit team of 33 people in its textual content team. Let's look at some of the prominent milestones that PopXo managed to attain throughout the years:

• It has drawn over 39 million users per month
• PopXo has delivered content in over 6 languages
• The startup has seen over 10.18 mn visiting its content across the mobile app in a month
• PopXo claims to have 1.6 bn monthly social media impressions

Popxo - Startup Challenges

Founded by Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom, ideating, founding, and growing PopXo was difficult for two independent women entrepreneurs, which both of them managed really well, earning themselves quite a name in the industry. The first challenge for PopXo was to expand the content it produced and the kind of content produced by the website. The challenge that followed was the creation of an app. Even here PopXo absolutely nailed it. The website witnessed an overwhelming 500K initial downloads!  

Popxo - Competitors

Though Popxo, when it was launched,  was the sole platform focused on confident and educated women, which speak to them directly without taking down to them, PopXo has been a lot of companies competing with it once it started achieving milestones. Some of the PopXo competitors can be noted as:

• ScoopWhoop
• Polka Cafe
• BuzzFeed
• The Business of Fashion
• nippon.com
• Luxe Radio
• The Canberra Times

Popxo - Future Plans

Popxo forayed into the beauty segment with POPxo Makeup Collection by MyGlamm, where both MyGlamm and PopXo are a part of The Good Glamm Group in October 2021 and is currently targeting a revenue run rate of Rs 100 crore in the upcoming 12 months.

Popxo - FAQs

What is POPxo?

POPxo is an Indian online platform specially for women to read, watch, shop and hangout. POPxo covers content related to beauty, weddings, health and lifestyle.

Who started POPxo?

Priyanka Gill has founded POPxo in 2015.

Who is the owner of MyGlamm?

Darpan Sanghvi owns MyGlamm.

Does POPxo creates videos along with content?

Yes, POPxo is able to create over 2000 pieces of content along with 150 videos, 800 stories and a large number of social media graphics.