How Her Circle has turned into a multiverse for women empowerment and inclusion

Her Circle is a prominent digital platform that is empowering women and fostering a sense of inclusivity. It is a thriving community providing scope for professional development, personal growth, and forging meaningful connections among women worldwide.

Tanya Chaitanya is the CEO of Her Circle & Digital and Diversity Initiatives at Reliance Industries Limited. She has been leading some transformative projects and initiatives having a significant impact on the industry.

According to Chaitanya, the digital platforms create a sense of democracy and Her Circle was created to bridge the gender digital divide. Her Circle provides networking opportunities, sharing updates, growing together, finding job opportunities, financial advice, and upskilling. It is described as a one-stop destination for women to be empowered, connected, and informed. It has launched the EveryBody project supporting body positivity and free expression. Her Circle Bizruptors is a campaign that is dedicated to women startup founders, by supporting their innovative solutions and long-term Unicorn ambitions.

In conversation with Adgully, Tanya Chaitanya sheds light on the platforms various initiatives to empower women, remove the gender digital divide, and work on its key pillars of sustainability, inclusion and equity, entrepreneurship, and empowerment.

What is the importance of digital platforms in empowering women and fostering a sense of inclusivity and diversity? How is Her Circle empowering women? How did the idea come about?

It may sound poetic, but how nature, birds grow and move unhindered across geographies and sensibilities, so does digital. Access to digital platforms, by default, is empowering. Digital platforms offer a sense of democracy. While there is always a risk everywhere, the online space if used with caution, offers women options to stay aware, connected, and informed.

Offline, women can sometimes have little or no freedom of movement, especially in smaller towns due to safety, security, and lack of infrastructure. Digital platforms provide easy access and a window to the world. That said, the gender digital divide still exists and is alarming. The OXFAM Digital Divide-India Inequality Report 2022 says that India accounts for half of the world’s gendered digital divide. Indian women are 15% less likely to own a mobile phone, 33% less likely to use mobile internet services than men, and almost 55% less likely to be doing banking and financial transactions online. Her Circle was imagined to bridge the gender digital divide. Launched in March 2021, Her Circle is already India’s largest digital platform for women, a choice that gives every woman a strong voice.

How is Her Circle different from its competitors? What is its USP? 

With our 350+ million plus reach and 2.45 lakh registered users, Her Circle’s biggest USP is that it is a multiverse for women covering content, social networking, personalised tracking, job opportunities, upskilling, wellness help, financial advice, and entrepreneurial expertise. We are multilingual and available in English and Hindi. We are a one-stop destination for everything a woman needs to stay empowered, informed, and connected. A community that is a circle of light and sisterhood.

What are the marketing activities undertaken by HerCircle in the past year and during the first half of this year?  What is its overall marketing strategy?

Her Circle’s marketing activities owe everything to the community and word-of-mouth. Our offline activations center around community support and building. Her Circle Hive is an on-ground initiative where we invite our community members to interact with fitness, finance, lifestyle, and corporate experts. Deanne Pande, a well-known celebrity fitness expert did a session, where she interacted with Her Circle readers, and gave them fitness lessons and lifestyle advice.

Our masterclasses have focussed on building soft skills such as food styling, makeup, and hair expertise, professional photography, choreography, etc. Renowned makeup artist Shaan Mu, photographer Vikram Bawa, MasterChef Payal Gupta, etc., have given their professional crash courses free of cost for Her Circle users.

On social media, our marketing campaign – #HasMyBack – was a resounding success, where women came together to talk of solidarity and sisterhood and posted pictures of those who have been their supporters and cheerleaders. The Her Circle impact is measured through our reach, connection, information, and eventual feedback – only from the reader.

How was 2022 for Her Circle? What are your plans for the coming times? 

2022 was a year of consolidation for Her Circle. We started with a bang in the middle of the pandemic and with the kind of registrations we saw in the beginning, we were super encouraged. We wondered if we would be able to keep up the momentum once people returned to physical office. But our users are loyal, our content is consistently high quality and our conversations in social networking are safe, so women can speak freely without hesitation.

Her Circle’s initiatives are across our key pillars – sustainability, inclusion and equity, entrepreneurship, and empowerment. Our initiative, Her Circle Bizruptors, is a platform for giving women start-up founders and their ideas/ innovations/ products/ services a chance to be showcased. We intend to build a community of inspirational women entrepreneurs and winners.

The sustainability initiatives we run cover the length and breadth of planet-friendly ideas. Our sustainability special meets women warriors who build circularity, promote environmental practices, and believe in being green citizens and parents. Kalki Koechlin, Kirti Poonia and Rameshwari Seth have been some advocates of sustainability we have associated with.

Our inclusion and equity initiative is the ongoing Her Circle EveryBODY project, which has featured body-positive influencers such as Virali Modi, Neha Parulkar, Tanvi Geetha Ravishankar, Neelakshi Singh, Apeksha Dusija, Roma Maity, Apeksha Dusija, Pooja & Norah.

How are women benefitting from HerCircle? Which age group of women are most active on the platform? What is its engagement rate?

A community that supports together digitally, builds each other individually. Our focus in the professional and social networking is to throw the spotlight on real women. Not celebrities, but regular women who have a talent and have found their niche. A chef, a dancer, a yoga enthusiast, a fitness specialist, a human rights activist, an equality advocate – Her Circle’s Connect section gives a platform to women with different skills and talents.

Our personalised trackers provide up-to-date information on how each person can customise their health, nutrition, fitness, and financial requirements; Help section connects women to Reliance Hospital doctors like gynecologists, mental health experts, and dermatologists who respond to reader concerns and queries within 24 hours.

The age band that is our largest is between 18 and 45 years. But our reader base is strong and even extends to those in their 60s. With a high engagement rate of 5%-6%, we are not just the largest, but also the most animated digital community. One for all, all for one.

Could you tell us in brief about the EveryBody project, Bizruptors project, as well as the sustainability project of Her Circle? What are the objectives of these projects and what do they aim to solve?

Launched this year on our second anniversary was the Her Circle EveryBODY project. Here, we promoted body positivity and have featured influencers with a difference. Our cover people each month for this project fit into no pre-conceived notions of perfection. They are diversity advocates across size, skin, colour, body, neurology, and physicality and they are making the world a kinder place, one post at a time. Take, for instance, Pooja and Norah, the mom-daughter duo in which the five-year-old child has Down Syndrome. When we featured them, we got amazing reviews on how neurodiversity is often ignored and rarely mainstreamed. We opened up on conversations on size-inclusivity, special needs.

Her Circle Bizruptors is a campaign that is scouting for start-up women founders with ideas, innovative solutions, and long-term Unicorn ambitions. Entries are now open and nominees are being selected throughout the year and showcased on our platform. At the end of the campaign, the Her Circle Bizruptor trophy awaits the winners.

Our Sustainability Digital covers are now in their second year. The first time we featured circularity and environment champions like Kirti Poonia, Rajeshwari Seth, and Elsie Gabriel. This year, we had Kalki Koechlin topline the cover as a green parenting advocate and a person who is environmentally conscious in her daily life.