India’s influencer marketing industry is rapidly evolving, fueled by the creator economy boom. As brands increasingly tap into this space, Qoruz has emerged as a leading data-driven platform to help navigate the complexities of identifying, engaging, and measuring influencer campaigns. With its AI-powered analytics and comprehensive toolset, the Bengaluru-based startup is empowering brands and creators alike to forge more meaningful and impactful collaborations.

From Disjointed Tactics to System Of Record for Influencer marketing

The influencer marketing landscape has undergone a significant transformation over the years. In its early days, brands resorted to questionable tactics like artificially inflating likes and follower counts – strategies now widely regarded as unethical “black hat” methods within the industry.

As social media’s prominence grew, brands began collaborating with bloggers and tapping into influencers’ reach for their marketing campaigns. However, identifying the right influencers and accurately measuring campaign performance remained persistent challenges.

Qoruz head of growth/founding member Mothi Venkatesh recognized these pain points and the need for a more sophisticated, data-driven approach. “The industry needed better analytics to truly understand influencer impact,” he says. This realization sparked the development of Qoruz’s platform for performance-driven influencer marketing.

What sets Qoruz apart is its comprehensive toolset that streamlines every stage of the influencer marketing process – from influencer discovery, brand-audience analysis, campaign management and granular performance reporting. “Our platform guides brands through the entire lifecycle, providing real-time data and insights at every step,” Mothi explains.

Data-Driven Approach to Identify and Select Influencers

At the core of Qoruz’s offering is its extensive database of influencers, meticulously vetted and ranked using a proprietary metric called the “Qoruz score.” This score factors engagement rates, audience affinity, and trust, enabling brands to identify the most suitable influencers for their campaigns. “We have our own metric of Qoruz score, which is a combination of several metrics put together from engagement rate, audience affinity, trust, etc…” Mothi explains. “So you can find the right influencers be it  nano, micro, macro to A-listers.”

Streamlining Influencer Campaign Management and Reporting

Beyond influencer discovery, Qoruz streamlines the entire campaign lifecycle, from planning and bulk outreach to content approval, execution, and real-time reporting. Brands can negotiate costs, track deliverables, and optimize performance based on metrics like cost-per-engagement and cost-per-view.

“While running a campaign you need to know, how many deliverables have you committed? How many have gone live and out of reach?” Mothi explains. “Like, what is the campaign’s performance in terms of content, in terms of influencers? And what does sentiment analysis look like.”

Addressing Industry Challenges with Advanced Analytics

While influencer marketing has gained significant traction in India, challenges persist, such as fake followers, lack of standardized measurement, and manual processes for agencies. Qoruz aims to tackle these issues head-on through its advanced analytics capabilities. “Agencies are limited by doing all this process in a very manual way of surfing through Instagram, YouTube, etc.” Venkatesh notes. 

Qoruz’s solution? “We collect the data of social media influencers, from Instagram and YouTube, and we do the vetting process of who these influencers are, on a very real-time basis.”

Empowering Creators and Fostering Diversity

Beyond facilitating brand-influencer collaborations, Qoruz plays a role in empowering creators themselves. By enabling brands to work with a larger pool of micro-influencers instead of relying solely on celebrities, the platform helps distribute opportunities more widely. “Instead of working with one celebrity, you can activate 100 micro-influencers or nano-influencers and you can hyper-target the region,” Mothi explains. “And then you can run campaigns more effectively.”

This approach not only fosters financial stability for creators but also promotes diversity within the influencer community. “When it comes to the creator economy itself, it’s very inclusive. You need to cover the whole spectrum,” Mothi emphasizes.

Leveraging AI to Enhance Influencer Marketing Capabilities

As the influencer marketing landscape continues to evolve, Qoruz is actively exploring ways to leverage AI and large language models like GPT4 to further enhance its capabilities. From simplifying influencer search through natural language queries to automating content tagging and understanding campaign briefs, OpenAI promises to streamline processes and improve accuracy.

“ChatGPT and Gemini came up and simplified a lot of processes,” Mothi notes. “This can also further be implemented in many other ways across the entire flow.”

Looking Ahead: Expansion and Setting New Standards

With India’s influencer marketing industry projected to grow exponentially, Qoruz has set its sights on expanding into the more mature US market. “That’s where the evolved industry is and it’s easily a ten X of what we are operating in,” Mothi says. “It’s going to be a huge opportunity for us and it’s what we have been looking for, going after the global market.”

Ultimately, Qoruz’s vision extends beyond facilitating brand-creator collaborations. By bringing a data-driven, analytical approach to the space, the company aims to establish new standards and benchmarks for influencer marketing – akin to the evolution of performance marketing. “With me coming from the analytics background we are focusing more on the analytics aspect, in a way to bring a new set of standards for influencer marketing, for brand collaborations,” Mothi affirms.

As the creator economy continues its rapid ascent, platforms like Qoruz are poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of influencer marketing – fostering transparency, measurability, and genuine connections between brands and creators.