Faym Bappi is the co-founder and CEO of HypeScout, Bangladesh’s first influencer marketing platform that is now plotting to go regional. Before starting HypeScout, Faym worked at Pathao, one of the early Bangladeshi startups to receive global attention, where he worked at the intersection of marketing and technology. Trained in computer science, Faym always wanted to build his own thing, a passion that eventually led him to start HypeScout. 

While influencer marketing is relatively new to Bangladesh, it is a fast-growing phenomenon across markets. Many industry insiders predict that influencer marketing is going to be an important part of the future of digital marketing. It makes sense. 

I recently had an opportunity to speak with Faym about all things HypeScout, influencer marketing, and startups. We talk about his startup journey, how HypeScout came into being, what the early days of HypeScout were like, and what the first version of HypeScout was like, we discuss the state of HypeScout’s business today, strategic direction, and future plans, we delve into the influencer marketing and the future of influencer marketing, and we reflect on the challenges and rewards of being a founder and his lessons from his journey so far. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. I had an excellent time speaking with Faym. I hope you enjoy reading the as much as I enjoyed doing it. Thanks to Ayrin Saleha Ria for helping me edit this interview. Happy building! 

Ruhul Kader: Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Can you please briefly introduce yourself and what you are working on?

Faym Bappi: Thank you for having me. By training, I’m a computer science graduate from Daffodil International University. I started working at Pathao in 2016 when I was a second-year undergrad student. 

I worked at Pathao in the marketing department, digital marketing in particular, for almost five years. We built many processes to automate things between product and marketing. For instance, Pathao used to send these push notifications. Initially, we were using third-party software to send out those notifications, which was expensive. We then decided to build our push notification system to reduce the costs. 

One of my roles at Pathao was automating manual processes, particularly in marketing, through technology. Since I came from a computer science background, working at the intersection of tech and marketing was interesting for me. I put all my expertise and efforts to work and learned tremendously about tech and marketing and what is possible at the intersection of the two. 

I always wanted to build something that could help people at scale. That’s part of the motivation behind starting HypeScout. I first came across the idea of HypeScout in 2020. The Pandemic had already started. Many people were losing their jobs. Companies were going through major layoffs and salary cuts. I had to go through a salary cut as well. I was looking for ideas to explore. That's when the idea of an influencer marketing platform came to my mind. 

Before that, I didn't know that something like that existed, especially in the South Asia region. I shared the idea with a couple of my friends, and then we started building it. Eventually, we got funded, and we started the journey. That's about how HypeScout started its journey. 

My understanding is that anybody can be an influencer. Everyone can influence some people. For instance, I come from a tech and marketing background. I have a community of my own, whatever small that community is. I can promote relevant things to that community. If I come across an excellent course on marketing, I can post it on Facebook with a small description of how great the course is and so on. Now, some of the people who follow me and trust my judgment will check the course out. Some of them may even purchase the course. You promote a particular product/service to the people you know or to people who follow you online by writing/posting about that product. In return, you earn money from the brands. That's the basic idea of influencer marketing.