TikTok: More than 15-seconds of fame?

Is it a passing fad? Is it here to stay? A multimedia story on what’s driving the phenomenon

Jul 18, 2019 5:07p.m.
Technology

[Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay]

What does TikTok reveal about millennials and consumer behaviour? How can marketers leverage it? This is the first story in a four-part series—a collaboration with Quipper Research, led by its co-founder and CEO Piyul Mukherjee.

TikTok has created waves around the world with its social content app. In less than a year, it has reset the narrative in India as well—especially in small towns—with nearly 200 million users in its fold. Even though the videos are no more than 15 seconds, you have to see the virality to believe it. TikTok has turned some of its content creators into “stars” in their own right, with millions of followers.

Yet most experts are struggling to understand what’s going on.

Founding Fuel has planned a special package of stories on understanding the TikTok phenomenon, in collaboration with the team at Quipper Research, led by its co-founder and CEO Piyul Mukherjee. This multimedia story, with embedded video and podcast, is the first story in that series. It offers a quick look at the factors at play behind this rising wave—and the possible breakwater that may stem the tide.

Click on the image below to view the multimedia story—on your laptop, keep clicking to go through each slide and view the entire presentation. On a smartphone, you can expand it and view in landscape mode; and you can swipe to view the slides.

What’s Next

A Facebook Live session on Understanding the TikTok Phenomenon

Date: July 19, 2019, at 3 pm (IST). Register here

Panellists:

Piyul Mukherjee, Co-founder and CEO, Quipper Research
Damodar Mall, CEO, Reliance Retail (Grocery Retail)
Ashwin Suresh, Founder, Pocket Aces
Host: Indrajit Gupta, Co-Founder, Founding Fuel

Watch out for more stories on this theme over the next few days.

Also in this series

Understanding the TikTok phenomenon

A Facebook Live conversation with Piyul Mukherjee from Quipper Research; Damodar Mall from Reliance Retail; and Ashwin Suresh from Pocket Aces

Please look now: We are changing

To make sense of the uncertainties and disruptions around us, we must try and understand the underlying human attitudes and behaviour. There’s much for brands and marketers to learn from the TikTok phenomenon, says Piyul Mukherjee. (Don't miss the embedded multimedia story ‘Inside the World of TikTok Stars’)

Bharat is watching this. Is your brand watching too?

Business As Usual marketers are blissfully insulated from what’s happening on TikTok, an app that has at least 200 million of their own core customers hooked, says Piyul Mukherjee

About the author

Anmol Shrivastava

Writer | Manager - Business Development & Insights

Founding Fuel

A strong desire to shape and further build the entrepreneurial community drew Anmol (Twitter: @MoleShrivastava) towards Founding Fuel, where he prides himself on being the only millennial in the current core team. Recently, his story on 'The Satara' uprising was shortlisted as the best story of the year in the Business and Economy category at the prestigious Red Ink Awards 2021 by the Mumbai Press Club.

At Founding Fuel, his role involves supporting diverse strategic planks of the organisation including partnerships, business development, content, storytelling, community engagement and most importantly supporting the growth of Founding Fuel’s digital transformation practice.

Prior to joining Founding Fuel, Anmol was a part of Samhita Social Ventures, one of India’s leading social impact consulting firms. At Samhita, Anmol led the CEO’s office where his role involved working with the senior leadership to shape the firm’s organisational strategy and internal culture, while supporting business development and execution of strategic projects.

During his stint Anmol consulted several marquee corporates on how they can maximise shared value through their social impact initiatives. He led the inception of Samhita’s WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) platform and was able to build founding partnerships with marquee entities such as the Government of Maharashtra, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF and India Sanitation Coalition. He was also responsible for setting up the flagship project of the platform ‘Swachh Maharashtra Grand Challenge’, which is an open innovation platform to identify, implement, nurture and replicate innovations across the sanitation value chain. Collectively the two properties channelise several million dollars of funding into India’s sanitation sector and have been lauded by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis as first-of-their-kind initiatives.

Anmol was additionally recognised as Top 1000 global SDG talents in 2018 by UNLEASH. He has also been a part of other influential communities including the World Business Dialogue (2016), South American Business Forum (2014) and Harvard Project for Asia and International Relations (2014).

Anmol graduated first class from BITS Pilani K.K. Birla Goa Campus in 2016 with majors in B.E (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Politics, Economics and Philosophy. He is the only student in the history of his university to have been elected by students as the president and general secretary and also be nominated by the chancellor KM Birla to represent his campus at the BITS University Senate. Through these roles, he undertook several key initiatives. One that’s closest to his heart includes registering over 600 citizens in the Indian National Voter List for the 2014 general elections.

Anmol additionally has a thesis from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in the domain of renewable energy. He is also a participant in the prized Indian National Mathematics Olympiad.

As a technology, mathematics, entrepreneurship and sports enthusiast, Anmol admires leaders such as Steve Jobs, MS Dhoni, Viswanathan Anand, Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, Barack Obama and Amar Bose. He loves to travel, explore places and meet new people. His other hobbies include playing chess, following his favourite football club Manchester United and devouring stories on business, politics, entrepreneurship, design and behavioural sciences.