{Startup watch: MYn} A social media app that offers 100% digital privacy

This refreshing new made in India social media app aims to reimagine the social media landscape maintaining complete data privacy and security sans ads.

Social media has become an indispensable communication tool for us. We eat, sleep, and breathe with social media. India’s social media environment has dampened over time due to factors like insecure infrastructure, data breach, data theft, irrelevant information, barrage of advertisements, unappealing content, etc.

MYn, a made-in-India application from Bangalore based startup, Multi-Verse Technologies, aims to reimagine the social media landscape. It allows consumers to discover, create, connect, and communicate on a secure end-to-end encrypted system. Further, the app commits to create a no advertisement environment reinvigorating the social media experience with irrelevant interruption.

The Tech Panda spoke to Nanjunda Prasad Ramesh, CEO of Multi-Verse Technologies about the startup’s vision of ensuring data privacy and data security in their social media app.

Nanjunda Prasad Ramesh

We aim to be the only app that a user will ever need and possibly have our own operating system on a phone that boots to MYn

“MYn promises 100% digital privacy. We do not share user’s phone number or any of their personal information within or outside the app. We collect it only to help the user manage their account easily. We do not have ads on the app. By virtue of which, we do not need to share the user’s phone number or any of their personal information,” he says.

“Our monetisation model is such that it does not require user information. We charge our live-local/proximity e-commerce entities, content creators for their channels and work persona enterprises a fixed listing fee. That’s where our revenue comes from,” he adds.

What They Do

MYn owns its own infrastructure. Promising 100% digital safety, MYn has also put into action a 24×7 content and application monitoring and incident response team, one which has effectively and efficiently protected many organisations in India.

The goal was to provide users with good-quality content that they want to consume

MYn presents the country a refreshing opportunity to socialize and network in a cohesive manner while maintaining complete data privacy proving that MYn is the viable sustainable alternative that we can have.

MYn’s a private, ad-free, commission-free social media app that allows one to discover, interact and transact on their own terms.

It is India’s First Super App. The only app to complete the user journey

“We have a robust revenue model that’s not dependent on user information,” says Ramesh.

The startup has also innovated at the feature level. It has a dedicated space for channels (for content creators), users and for personas (MYworld), (MYown) and (MYwork) on the app. Interest-based feed, Star-rating system, an all-in-one app.

“It is India’s First Super App. The only app to complete the user journey,” he adds proudly.

Features

MYn has set out to address all the inherent challenges of the current social media landscape. It offers complete user privacy, does not share user information, does not have annoying ads or does not levy any commission, unlike other social media apps.

“It’s a one-of-a-kind app one can truly call their own,” says Ramesh.

On MYn, users can browse content according to their interest. They can choose from various categories like fashion, beauty, sports, comedy, art, etc., that is, consume only what’s relevant to them.

As humans, we behave differently in different settings. We present a different personality in public, private, and work life. Hence, we’ve created dedicated spaces for each of these personalities on the app

“The goal was to provide users with good-quality content that they want to consume,” he adds.

MYn users can have three personas, public (MYworld), personal (MYown), and work (MYwork), like they do in their physical reality. They can venture into the world of social media and shop from local businesses on MYworld; stay in touch with their friends and family; store and share memories with MYn’s potentially infinite cloud storage options on MYown; and communicate and collaborate across teams within their organisation.

“As humans, we behave differently in different settings. We present a different personality in public, private, and work life. Hence, we’ve created dedicated spaces for each of these personalities on the app,” he explains.

Inspiration & Origin

MYn Founder A. S. Rajgopal had a vision to unify the functionality of all available apps.

“When looked at fundamentally, most apps, be it social media, e-commerce, messaging, storage, payments or workplace collaboration, offer only or a combination of discovery, interaction, and transaction that apply in various contexts. With MYn, he believed we could abstract all these in a use-case agnostic manner,” Ramesh says.

We wanted to abide by a few guiding principles, offering complete privacy to users, ensuring no ads on the app and no commissions on any transactions on the app

“Keeping this in mind, we wanted to abide by a few guiding principles, offering complete privacy to users, ensuring no ads on the app and no commissions on any transactions on the app,” he adds.

Like many digital businesses, COVID-19 impacted the organisation in a positive way.

“It brought out a now or never attitude within the team that helped us bring out an app of this scale quickly with everybody focusing on a common goal. Moreover, the COVID scenario helped us build the proximity commerce piece with conviction since we wanted to help traders get back to business, be it online or offline,” he says.

Future Plans

The MYn team has elaborate plans to capture audiences in the future.

“Since we will have millions of users and businesses on the app, we will continue to build user journeys making it more and more ubiquitous for the users to use the app for everyday needs. We aim to be the only app that a user will ever need and possibly have our own operating system on a phone that boots to MYn,” says Ramesh.

Navanwita Bora Sachdev

Navanwita is the editor of The Tech Panda who also frequently publishes stories in news outlets such as The Indian Express, Entrepreneur India, and The Business Standard