Social media start up Fishbowl launches in India to tap consulting, IT professionals

US-based social media startup Fishbowl that helps professionals to connect within their companies and industries is launching in India to tap professionals from consulting and IT sector.

“India has a large footprint in industries like Consulting and IT and since Fishbowl is reaching saturation levels in early industries like consulting, accounting, and advertising in the US… entering India provides a tremendous market of talented professionals for these industries,” says Matt Sunbulli, co-founder and CEO, Fishbowl.

India will be the second launch market for Fishbowl after its success in the US and Sunbulli is optimistic about establishing Fishbowl as the go-to professional networking platform in India.

The four-year-old social media platform connects professionals within the industry and community-related bowls (groups) that allow verified professionals to have candid conversations with other people working in roles and industries similar to their own and helps break down organizational barriers by allowing employees to interact directly with senior leadership at their company and peers in their industry.

The app is used by those working in the tech, consulting, advertising, marketing, law, and accounting industries and allows professionals to have flexibility with how they represent themselves when posting. For example, some users can choose to represent themselves with only their professional title or place of employment, such as “Senior Healthcare Consultant” or “Employee at Boston Consulting Group”. This flexibility helps honest discussions with co-workers and senior leaders.

Launching at this juncture in India makes sense for the company, as people are working from home and are looking for mediums to have conversations with other professionals virtually. While other established professional networks like LinkedIn is valuable for professional contacts and to search job listings, as a social platform it generates very little conversations between professionals, and often they are lacking in quality and relevance, says Sunbulli. Fishbowl sees an opportunity to plug this gap. Fishbowl’s market entry is predicated on high company and industry adoption levels as well as user engagement. According to company data, Fishbowl users spend an average of 15 minutes a day on the platform whereas on platforms like LinkedIn they typically spend 15 minutes a month. More than a million professionals have used Fishbowl and the platform has significant adoption levels by professionals from companies across industries like McKinsey, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Deloitte, Accenture, and JPMorgan Chase.

The current global market of professional social networking apps is 800+ million users and in India, it is 90 million which makes it an attractive market for Fishbowl. India will also add an average of 8-12 million people to its workforce each year thereby potentially adding another 90 million to the workforce by 2030. “This makes India a very attractive proposition as with a population of 1.2 billion you have only barely scratched the surface,” adds Sunbulli.

Fishbowl will also give Indian professionals and MBA students who aspire to be in consulting roles, an opportunity to interact with global leadership talent such as Partners and Principals from big firms such as McKinsey, BCG and Deloitte. Livemint