A paywall for your email inbox: Crazy or ingenious?

In this Q&A series, we suss out the opportunities, thinking, and motivations behind some of Asia’s promising startups. You can also catch our full startup coverage here.

For almost every professional, emails are still one of the best ways to connect to someone for business inquiries. However, this can lead to people receiving hundreds of emails a day, making it hard to keep track of those that are most relevant.

At the height of the pandemic, serial entrepreneur Ranjith Parasuraman sought to change this, co-founding Radr last year. With the platform, users can charge senders a fee to reach their email inboxes.

Photo credit: Radr

How is your startup solving the problem?

Parasuraman: We are empowering people to make email senders pay a fee to get their reply. This helps recipients control incoming messages and puts a price on their time. Meanwhile, Radr refunds senders if their messages are ignored.

(Karthik Kumaraswamy, Radr co-founder, adds some context: “All conversations on Radr happen from your email, so you can simply embed the Radr link in your email signature or send an auto reply. Even people who know your email address will know that they have a better chance of getting your reply by messaging you via your Radr link.”)

Who is your target customer?

Our target customer is every professional, creator, or influencer who gets cold emails and direct messages from people they don’t know.

Why is this the right time to do your startup?

Everyone is part of a massive siloed social network, but connecting one-on-one with people we don’t know has become even more difficult because of the sheer volume of messages, spam, and privacy issues.

At the same time, the creator economy is growing, but monetization options are still very limited and again it’s getting platformed into silos.

We feel this is a great time to make an open platform like email work for the benefit of everyone – for monetization, for productivity, and for real connectivity.

Why is your team best positioned to solve this problem over others?