Coto aims to empower women creators with a safe space to drive authentic conversations: Tarun Katial

Tarun Katial launched ‘coto’ (come together) in October 2022, along with two of his ex-colleagues at Zee5, Aparna Acharekar and Rajneel Kumar. 

The platform is a social community app, driven by women creators that use Web 3 principles such as decentralised networks and NFTs. It aims to give women creators the chance to have authentic conversations with their communities digitally. 

Through coto, women can create online public and/or private communities on the app, share video, audio, and text content, and interact freely with their community members. Apart from creating content, coto rewards women influencers for their work on the platform by allowing them to participate in token deals. Through these tokens, influencers can generate revenue and further scale their content within the community. 

Since its inception till date, the platform has onboarded over 5,000 women creators across tier 1,2 and 3 markets.

Some of these influencers are Achint Kaur, Urvashi Dholakia, Richa Anirudh, Mona Singh, Sahar Quaze, Ishita Arun, Pallavi Burnwal, Apurva Purohit, Sai Deodhar, Juhi Babbar and Smita Bansal. 

Recently, the app partnered with Collective Artists Network to empower women creators through a Tokenised Reward Program 'coto gains'. 

The partnership aims to reward women creators for their contributions to the platform and aspires to build an ecosystem that strives for diversity.

We caught up with Katial to understand how women in the creator economy can leverage coto, its digital solutions and its association with the Collective Artists Network. 

Edited excerpts: 

What was the intent of launching coto? 

The whole purpose of coto at the base level is to allow women to have a safe space for conversations. 

The second layer is to provide the platform to women digital creators who invest in content that is relevant for females but is flagged off on mainstream social media platforms. 

While speaking about challenges that women face, certain words such as vagina and menstruation, for instance, are deemed inappropriate on some social media platforms. That is why we wanted to give creators a chance to have the freedom to speak their minds. 

There is a pivotal need for women to have authentic conversations. We want women from all walks of life globally to find coto as a safe space to have the conversations they want. 

What specific strategies does the Collective Artists Networks partnership bring to the table to accelerate the growth and expansion of the platform?

When we launched the platform we had one goal in mind to empower women creators to get fair recognition and visibility. So, partnering with Collective Artists Networks was inevitable as they have a roster of women creators already. Through this partnership, we aim to support women through marketing capabilities and coach them on how to grow their engagement amongst their communities. 

What marketing opportunities does the women creator ecosystem garner through coto?

Our biggest goal is to be a participative ownership platform for women creators. 

We intend to provide the infrastructure to creators who come in and set up their communities.

The spotlight is on communities and the creators who are brands in their own right. We support their social media and digital marketing offerings. Furthermore, we give them a space to host webinars and a host of other multi-media support offerings. 

However, at the core level, our goal is to offer creators pertinent communities that can lead to relevant conversations for women. 

How does coto differentiate itself from other social media platforms?

Firstly, our platform is driven by women creators. Secondly, we want to establish ourselves as a social community rather than a social media platform. In a community-led platform, many creators can have a voice and contribute to be able to have conversations. 

Unlike social media platforms, where influencers are followed, here at coto, communities are built. 

We have been using digital communities on WhatsApp and Facebook groups. However, none of these communities gets scaled. 

With coto, we give creators full access to scale their content and give audiences a chance to discover communities they are interested in. 

What are the key factors for women creators who want to leverage their content on coto?

We propose to reward our creators for creating a relevant network. The token economy that we are creating is a unique model that will help creators incentivise their content. 

We have created a 360-degree suite of monetisation for creators to allow them the freedom to choose between premium content, brand advocacy, advertisements, build merchandise or create a marketplace for their products.

What is the Publishers Partner Program offered by coto, and how can creators have a vantage point through this?

Publishers are a key aspect of content creators. Especially for those platforms whose target audience centres around women who are most keen to come onto the platform, such as beauty, menstrual health, make-up, Femtech and so on. 

The program extends coto’s creators' market reach to allow them to appeal to a women-only audience. It also enables creators to explore a wider content ecosystem, build advocacy, boost discovery and engagement.

How can creators generate digital tokens on the platform?

For every referral and user that is onboarded on the platform, one token is rewarded respectively. A unique link is created for creators to embed on their social media platforms so that their community members can join based on that link and can generate tokens through that. 

These token wallets can be used to liquidate and generate revenue. Another vantage point is that creators can use these tokens for offerings on the platform to scale their reach and content.