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InCom, a first-of-its-kind Influencer commerce marketplace powered by influencers, has officially made its entry as a catalyst into the e-commerce market. A brainchild of influencer marketing and tech company BeTagged, the platform provides a marketplace ecosystem that enables sales and e-commerce for brands via influencers by increasing data transparency and sales attribution for and between influencers and brands. The platform is available via the InCom website, as well as via iOS and Android apps.

Developed by BeTagged Co-Founders Shamik Talukder, Krish Iyer and Anurag Awasthi, InCom looks to make the market more accessible. Here, BeTagged will be assuming the role of a fair broker. Powered by Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the platform looks to bridge the gap between brands and influencers and give consumers the recommendations they need.

Influencer Commerce and the Next Generation of e-Commerce

With SEA e-commerce sales valued at USD $373 billion by 2028, brands have been shifting towards influencer marketing as a way to develop a virtual community. At the same time, trends indicate that 61% of consumers trust recommendations and product reviews from key influencers who are considered reliable sources of information.

On one end of the spectrum for social media marketing, both brands and influencers seek to monetise their relationship. Brands are looking to market their products to consumers, and the influencers aim to earn from content marketing.

But narrowing down the right set of influencers for each brand remains a challenge, with many niche influencers overlooked due to their lack of exposure and in-depth data analysis. This was what Shamik Talukder, Co-Founder of and CEO at BeTagged, noticed while working closely with influencers, celebrities and brands as the previous Global Chief Business Officer of a tech startup.

Specifically, he saw how the fragmented nature of influencers made it difficult for brands to execute large-scale influencer campaigns. This greatly limited a brand’s ability to capitalise on influencer marketing’s high ROI. That inspired the BeTagged team to launch a full-service influencer marketing company powered by data and analytics.

“To add to this confusion, there is a distinct lack of transparency in pricing, with middlemen adding layers of costs. In addition, brand safety was questionable with little accountability on the part of the influencer,” said Talukder.

“On the other hand, there were influencers who had created strong social media assets and a loyal follower base, and were looking to monetise their content, but had poor access to brands and weak bargaining strength,” added ​​Krish Iyer, Co-Founder of BeTagged

Talukder continued: “From our experience of running an influencer marketing business in SEA for the last three years, it has become clear to us that a transparent ecosystem focused on product sales through influencers is necessary.”

The InCom Platform

InCom’s ‘pay-as-you-sell’ go-to-market (GTM) strategy comes at zero cost risk, making it perfect for smaller brands, startups or SMEs looking to launch themselves into the e-commerce space. The GTM strategy also allows larger brands to benefit from higher performance orientation.

To combat the information gap between brand and influencer partnerships, the application provides brands with access to first-party data and allows brands to list the products they wish to sell on the InCom marketplace to showcase their products to potential influencers across Southeast Asia. This includes key details such as size, colour, price, fulfillment channels, relevant product images and videos, as well as the percentage of sales commission for influencers, giving all participating brands an equal opportunity to showcase their offers to the influencer-verse.

On the other hand, the influencers on InCom can also choose to promote any of the products that align with their social media branding and interests. Influencers are thus empowered to explore and select brands and products based on key data such as product category, price or commission percentage.

Additionally, the platform extends this service beyond traditional e-commerce to allow influencers to explore opportunities in areas such as physical retail, and non-physical digital retail.

“InCom is the first of its kind in Southeast Asia—one that focuses on performance-based sales modules. We provide a live dashboard that tracks all relevant metrics for brands and influencers alike; brands can now gain access to a potential consumer base of over 400 million individuals across Southeast Asia and keep track of key data such as the number of influencer pick-ups for a product, the total number of sales quotas met, channel effectiveness, and the commissions payable. On the other hand, influencers can track how many units of their recommended products were purchased, their own channel effectiveness and how much they have earned in commissions,” shareed Iyer.

In addition to this, the platform also takes advantage of ML and AI to provide more in-depth data and analytics, which will help brands optimise the cost of sales and enable influencers to make the best choices.

While monetising their social media assets via product sales commissions, influencers also have the chance to develop a credibility stack via the platform’s performance tracking feature. This enables the curation of a credible portfolio, which enhances their reputation amongst brands and consumers also gain access to product reviews they can trust—a win across the board.

InCom is currently available in Indonesia via the InCom website, as well as iOS and Android apps. It will be available to the rest of the SEA region in Q2, 2023. For more information, visit BeTagged’s website at https://betagged.co/, or view the BeTagged team’s media kit HERE.

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