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Upgrade with Shakun Sethi by making sex go mainstream
90 Plays4 years ago
This episode of Upgrade With Nakul features pathbreaking entrepreneur Shakun Sethi. From founding the sexual wellbeing platform Tickle.Life to making sex a part of the “normal narrative”, this is her side of the story as she chats with Nakul about her entrepreneurial venture.
While most of India still sees sex as a taboo, here’s Shakun offering support for sexual awareness. Be it cishet individuals or the LGBTQ+ members, Tickle.Life is there to talk about the “untalkable” and help its users on the path through sexual health. In this episode, she breaks down why it is crucial to make this a topic to be recognized rather than dodged. Adult entertainment, sexual paraphernalia, chatting and dating apps, hear her cover both the human and corporate sides of all of these and more.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Show and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello guys, welcome to upgrade with Naakon. The point of the show is, we meet interesting people, they give us their productivity hacks, the technologies they use.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi guys, welcome to another exciting episode of Upgrade with Nakul and today I'm super excited to welcome Shakun to the show and you will love this episode, I'm telling you
What is Tickle.life?
00:00:39
Speaker
guys. Hey Nakul.
00:00:40
Speaker
So Shakul runs Tickle.life, which is how would you define your website? Tickle.life is a discovery platform, which is completely powered by the community of sexual well-being providers, supporters, professionals. So let me stop you there. What is sexual well-being? If I put it in real easy terms,
00:01:06
Speaker
It is about taking care about your needs and desire, best sexuality is concerned. So for every person, it's going to be different. But overall, it's just about accepting who you are and accepting who the other person is rather than doubting and rather than putting yourself in a certain kind of silo. So is tickle a Wikipedia of sex?
00:01:27
Speaker
It's graduating into becoming one. It is kind of a Wikipedia and the reason why I completely concur with what you're saying is because a lot of information that I'm looking out for, a lot of information which a lot of my friends keep on asking me, I've stopped Google searching. I've stopped going to different platforms. I just know that the right people
00:01:50
Speaker
the right information would be available on tikil.life itself. So it is graduating into becoming the Wikipedia of sexual
How Does Tickle.life Ensure Content Accuracy?
00:01:58
Speaker
well-being. But how can you claim that this is the right information? Google Baba knows everything, right? Google Baba knows everything and Google Baba also knows the things that we have on our platform because we are also on Google at the end of the day.
00:02:11
Speaker
But there's a process that we follow. So what happens is how we initiated was we got in touch with a lot of people, a lot of organizations and a lot of professionals and academicians who were working in sexual well-being.
00:02:29
Speaker
environment. So while they were working, their main target was not about how well their ranking is on Google, but their main criteria of working in this area was that they want to help people or they want to make some, you know, they want to break some roadblocks. So those are the kind of people who actually form our community. We do have few people who are known in the organization. We have few people who are known
00:02:54
Speaker
and who have a really high ranking on Google as well. But we do also have people whose genuine information just goes on because they do not know how SEO works. And they might be their genuine information is present on 10th or 15th or 30th page on Google. So that's the distinction between it. We do have people who are not maybe tech savvy. And I will consider me one of them. I'm not saying I'm a sexual wellbeing professional.
00:03:19
Speaker
at least somebody who does not understand SEO, but do understand that there is, you know, sometimes you do things which are very Google specific, because you want to be showcased, but there are a few things that you just do, because you'd really, really want them to be done. And that is the kind of criteria that we follow. Okay, so before we, I was getting on a call with you, I went to tickle.life and I was so curious, and I, how did you
00:03:45
Speaker
How did you reach there? I see, and from your LinkedIn profile, you are a seasoned PR professional, from PR to startup, and then the startup of a very different one. So this field, when you have technology and sex, that's called sex tech. Not too many people know it in India. So like you have fem tech, ed tech, this is sex tech.
00:04:12
Speaker
I think that's also something interesting because if you talked about that you know what I would like to know things also so that's why I'm sharing because here people usually do not know that this is the term that they use globally. So how did I do this?
Why Explore Sexual Well-being in India?
00:04:28
Speaker
So for a very long time I was like when I was in India before I was so I was not happy with what I was doing.
00:04:38
Speaker
Money was never an issue. It wasn't as if I was not making money. I was not successful. I was successful in whatever I was doing. So it was actually going very good. But the thing is, because my advent has been with people who have run startups, and I would always look at them, and I would be like, you know, these guys are doing something really, really cool.
00:05:01
Speaker
And what we're doing is it is here right now, but after a few days, it just goes off because that's how crisis communication and PR works. So it's just like you're helping, but you still know that you're not reaching your potential. So I've been having that doubt for a very long time. And then I was sitting in a Starbucks once.
00:05:26
Speaker
And I saw there was this man who must be in his 60s in Delhi, Saket, to select city walk. And he was looking at porn, a porn kid. And it's such a crowded place, so you can easily see what the other person is doing. And he was just sitting alone. And I'm pretty sure that he was waiting for other people to come, his family to come. And he had so many packages. And he was just happy.
00:05:56
Speaker
Like more than the clip, I was just looking at his face and he just looked relaxed, you know, like how you read a forward message and you giggle or when you're feeling really depressed and somebody just tells you something or you hear good news. So he had that spark on your face, his family came and his face completely changed. And he was scalding again. And obviously this clip was switched off.
00:06:21
Speaker
So for a while, it was funny. So I kept on thinking about it. We keep on thinking that our parents, our grandparents don't have names. We don't accept them to close the door. We don't expect them. We expect that after a certain age, they would go to a temple.
00:06:45
Speaker
you wouldn't argue they'll go for a family movie but you will never and never anything is marketed as you know for people who have needs and they might be in their 60s or 70s so that was something that stuck by me and I did talk to a lot of people I talked to a lot of therapists and I got to know that you know that is also one of the reasons why a lot of people in their later age are not happy
00:07:11
Speaker
are not satisfied and the problems that they have with their families.
00:07:16
Speaker
So anyways, it was just more like a research thingy that you do on the side and then you just talk and then you just laugh and then you just let go of it. So yeah, so that was how it started. And coming from a Chota city, I'm from Jammu. And when you see people abroad, you just get this image that things are going to be better, things are going to be so fun.
00:07:42
Speaker
and then also always being an outsider here because the way we were brought up like I was brought up like you have to take care of yourself you're equal to a man and you can do whatever you want to do so you come with that perception but when you go out
00:08:05
Speaker
I still do remember my first adult movie, which was when we were 16? No, 15? Actually, I don't even remember how old we were, but we were not adults, me and two of my friends. We went to see Monson wedding. And we were only three girls in the theater. And I'm pretty sure the guys did not see the movie. And it was such a whoring experience for us because they kept on teasing us. And this was in Jammu?
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, this was in Janggu. And this is the funny thing that our parents actually dropped us for the movie. But the kids want to see the movie and they want to see this movie. OK, fine. We'll drop you. I was brought up in Delhi. And in Delhi during the 90s, actually early 2000, when I was just about to pass school, there was a concept of morning show in Delhi cinema.
00:09:02
Speaker
they had these weird movies and these were proper, you know, B grade soft porn movies which were censored and would only play at 10 a.m. in the morning. And so me and couple of my school as a gift to ourselves passing out school went to these morning shows.
00:09:30
Speaker
And believe me, even being guys, it was a harrowing experience. Not because the movie was bad, the movie was bad. But the people who we were surrounded with were so sexually frustrated that their emotions were coming out in the hall itself. So it was disgusting from that point of view. So for me, that was an adult movie.
00:09:59
Speaker
But anyways, so I got in. I got in three colleges. I wanted to get into politics because I thought, you know, that's something that I should do because I was in crisis working with politicians. So you start understanding and you just start seeing this is something that will be interesting.
00:10:23
Speaker
So chose Hague because it had criminal code of justice. So that was very interesting for me. And I realized it's a small city. You know, you actually would get to meet a lot of people, which happened. But it also was interesting because there used to be a sex toy shop next to my house. And I used to pass by every day, but I never go inside.
00:10:53
Speaker
You know, it's just like, oh, it's a candy land, but I'm not allowed. No, one day, two day, three day. It took me six months. I'm super frustrated because why can't I just go inside? I'm independent. I've always earned my own money. I've always, you know, like I've just told even to go out, I just told my family that I'm going to go and study further and I'm going to take a sabbatical. So, so did go inside.
00:11:23
Speaker
And the woman was amazing. She just asked me, how can I help you? I had no idea how did she help me. Because I don't know about these things. And just because you have this thing that, oh, you're touching 30 and you don't know, people are going to judge you. So I ended up lying. Because I think that old guy was still in my head somewhere.
00:11:53
Speaker
So I just said, hey, I'm here to look out for something for my aunt. It's her birthday and she's in her sixties. What can I get for her? There were like thousands of things. I do not even know which side to point out. Is vibrator the right term or vibrator is the technology, you know?
00:12:17
Speaker
like which brand is good, which is not. So there were like so many questions and so many things which I did not know of and just because I did not want to be judged that I don't know things. And she looked at me and she said, what does she like? Which really triggered something in me that I don't know what I like personally for myself.
00:12:44
Speaker
How can I say what will my aunt would like or anybody would like? So more from a marketing, more from a selling point of view, I opened up. I started going to multiple shops. I must have gone through approximately 100 shops.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah, so asking about different and all across Europe, I did not even just like, you know, use Netherlands. I just started like going around and asking people about different relatives of mine. I'm looking at my friends and looking for this, this, this, this, this, this, this. And everywhere the question was saying, what do they like?
00:13:23
Speaker
So it just opened that most of us do not know what do we like. So how can anyone tell you what you should buy? I went to do so many stores and same thing. What do they like? What do they like? What do they like? So did not feel right. Did a lot of research and I realized most of the products that you say, they are, the descriptions are pretty, they expect that a person would know.
00:13:51
Speaker
or they will be like, you know, it has got so many megawatts, so many this. That's scary. Like, I could never understand what exactly would this thing do while reading it. Because I have not been brought up, I have not been taken through, you know, like a proper coaching.
Tickle.life's Business Model
00:14:10
Speaker
So anyway, so that happened, came back to India and knew that, you know, I'm going to be doing something here. How? I don't know, maybe like the shadow because I don't want to be Raki Samant or I don't want to be called a sex symbol and I don't want dick pics. Unfortunately or fortunately, I don't get any dick pics, which is very amazing because I hear a lot of women keep on talking about it, but my inboxes are completely clean.
00:14:38
Speaker
So I think people are now scared of me, like she would know even more than us. So yeah, so I did a few parties here in India, meetups, with people who I knew have traveled abroad. They had money, they had exposure, they had dated.
00:15:01
Speaker
to figure out what do they think. Most of them are frustrated if they're single, but most of them are not ready to experiment. Most of them are confused. Most of them do not know what consent is. And the way they're saying it's funny because they don't genuinely know what consent is or how do you ask for consent.
00:15:25
Speaker
So these all things started, then I said, let me just create an MVP, hide a software agency, made a very shitty looking chat, MVP where people could anonymously talk to each other and resolve each other's issues. That was the logic. So we had around like 5,000 people on second day itself.
00:15:50
Speaker
So say I have some problems, some sexual problems, like go to your website. Is there a chat box? How does it work? See, we do have a chat box, but what we've noticed from how consumers have been
00:16:08
Speaker
utilizing the platform and that also helps us to keep on reinventing ourselves. What we've noticed is that they usually already come with some requests. And when I talk about requests, most of them are not very specific. So a lot of people would come because they just want to know about LGBTQ. They're not talking about what do they want from LGBTQ. They're just saying,
00:16:31
Speaker
Hey, I am interested in LBGTQ, but I'm not too sure what it is. So they would come, they would search on the search engine, and then as a second step, they will start messaging us. So when they message us, there's somebody in the platform, usually to answer their questions.
00:16:47
Speaker
Or second, which I think is something that I personally really love is they somehow directly start interacting with the people whose content they have been consuming. So whether the content was in form of a video or whether it was a stand-up comedy that they've seen or reading a content or even hearing a podcast, then they start connecting with that person. So they keep on waiting for that person to share something new on Tickle.life. I think a lot from entrepreneurship.
00:17:17
Speaker
So I really feel that there are huge opportunities as Indians. We lose out because nobody has really exploited this industry in India. And there is a lot of money to be made from and I'm just right now my focus target would be frustrated men. You know women by women are the most active in this industry.
00:17:45
Speaker
I think there would be, right? But I think this is like low hanging fruit. See, for men also, because we were like, when we were doing a research across, we realized a lot of men also think that it is not manly enough if they take care of themselves. So even when you look out for the toys which are sold, most of the toys are sold which are women-centric rather than men-centric.
00:18:15
Speaker
So what these guys have started doing is, and I do know a lot of these production houses and designers and startup guys who are making products, they started making toys which are unisex. So the target still was men, but still they know that most probably men might not buy, at least women would. Or they might force into having this as a couple store.
00:18:44
Speaker
Okay, so you met a lot of experts. You saw all these problems. What do you do? And the chat thing didn't work. What is the next step? So they did not come.
00:18:56
Speaker
And the reason why they were not coming was because they were already in deep shade. They were doing multiple jobs, except very high profile therapist slash sexologist, not sexologist slash therapist. See the difference globally. I'm not even touching India anymore because I'm frustrated with India. Are doing multiple jobs because they can't sustain.
00:19:22
Speaker
but they have so much knowledge, they're doing so many things. So what can we do? So we started talking to them and we realized that they had a lot of data with them.
00:19:30
Speaker
which completely was not seeing the light, you know, like was not seeing the day anymore. And so they would like desperately something going on Facebook, then they would be banned on Facebook, then they come on Twitter, then they'll be like banned on Twitter, then they'll go on Insta, you know. So they're always running and obviously always hustling by knowing that they might not make money out of it. So we just told them and we had this event that we had to attend in US. I got hold of someone and I said, I give you sponsorship, please go and you know, start taking a name.
00:20:01
Speaker
So we just needed to showcase something. We can't just send someone without anything. So we got a WordPress thing made. By then, luckily, I had my co-founder, Farag, who's amazing. And we just made, because we just had one day, let's make a WordPress. What about content? Because we don't know how to write content also.
00:20:27
Speaker
And I don't want this, this, this, this, this. It just does not need to know about education centric, two or three things. So we ask these guys who we are connected with and who are data. Hey, can we at least have your old data for now with permission?
00:20:44
Speaker
And they said, yes, so we just got like two or three. We hired two interns from Gender Studies. They wrote a few articles, which we always used to get flake for because it was so Indianized. But anyways, TKL, you know, let's go. So that's how it started. Then we realized that, okay, people are coming. People have started thinking of TCL.Lysers, somebody who can bring them together.
00:21:13
Speaker
from a B2B point, at least. Because we just wanted to solve chicken and egg, where is chicken, where is egg for fine chicken? Then you can find the egg. So the chicken somehow started realizing that, huh, if I don't have to work too hard, if I have my old content, let me just push it and let me also tell them that, hey, I'll also give you some new content. Does that work? Rather than putting it on four or five places, might as well put it on Tikalot Life.
00:21:42
Speaker
It's the name also. So, and we were okay because we needed this. So that's how we started. And the time we realized that, you know, it started growing on its own. We completely started focusing on market in US, North America, as such. We did not talk to anybody in India anymore.
00:22:05
Speaker
We did not talk to anybody anywhere else. And then what happened is like, you know, the chain reaction started, people started refering other people. In India, like the initial content pieces, whoever would read and they were my friends who were in journalism and in startups, they would be like, are you opening a porn site? Why don't you go and, you know, like revamp it into a women fashion site?
00:22:35
Speaker
Why don't you just talk about women's sexuality? But my panda was clear that if I don't know what I am, I need a place to figure out who I am. And right now, the only awareness that is available easily is about LGBT. But what if I'm not L, I'm not G, I'm not B and I'm not D, then what?
00:23:01
Speaker
You know, because that's what's been happening because we don't have the awareness because of which we end up doing something else. Like three months back, I got to know that approximately one person of the entire population in the world are asexual people. And nobody talks about them. One person is a big number.
00:23:25
Speaker
I don't know, sorry. Sexual people mean... Please, you don't have to apologize. I don't know half of the things, trust me. So, it's about people who might have emotional connect, they might fall in love, romance, but they don't have sexual inclinations. So, they want everything, but they just don't want to consummate the relationship.
00:23:54
Speaker
All right. And now, so I've understood and now I'm going through your website. So how would you term your business model as? See, it's going to be contextual commerce. So people usually come through the content.
00:24:13
Speaker
They explore the content. We have people approximately staying for two minutes, minimum. And while they're exploring, they start exploring. So it's just like, you know, Shakun as a user comes. Shakun was inquisitive about transgender. She started the transgender. That's why we bifurcated, assuming that Shakun would not know anything.
00:24:39
Speaker
So Shakun comes, she starts exploring and while she's exploring, she would like to know about different things as well. And once she reaches a stage, she'll be like, then now what?
00:24:50
Speaker
That's it. I can just read. I can just listen. I can just watch. I need to, you know, like actualize my interest. So I might need a toy or I might need a book or I might need something. So that's the that's the logic that we've been going through and we did an experiment with the shop last month and we realized that people do go.
00:25:13
Speaker
and people do go and explore. But we've realized that, and we've decided as a team, that our personal focus will be more on the merchandise business rather than on toys and all. But all our partners can put anything in the shop as a market space. So they can also earn money. You earn from affiliate, I am understanding. And then the merchandise, you will manufacture yourself. Is that something?
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So we will be like, we will be making money from affiliates on one side. And second side will be manufacturing, white labeling, because we want to get into multiple products, just not just not merchandise. We win talks with people to, to create few different categories for us.
00:26:07
Speaker
because there are a lot of things in life which can actually help you for your sexual well-being. And you'll focus on the US market? See for selling, for first we want to focus on North America as a whole because that's where most of our target is coming from. But we did realize from May that a lot of people are coming from India and when they come they stay.
00:26:33
Speaker
they stay for, you know, they stay, they are actually going across, they're, you know, exploring more, which was very interesting for us because we don't have any India specific content. So, when I go to your website, it doesn't feel Indian. Because it was never meant for India. I was just completely like, so like, oh my God, here, nobody is going to help me or support me, it's all going to be Gyan.
00:26:58
Speaker
that you're doing something wrong, so might as well do where there are better chances and where the market is more involved. Sir, what is the top, fiercest thing you've seen on your platform? It's very funny. A lot of people actually ask us, can I talk to a bot? You can go on any random website and talk to a bot. Yeah, that's the strange part. And that's what we thought, why do they want to talk to a bot? But then we actually realized something very interesting.
00:27:26
Speaker
And we were talking to somebody at, there's this professional who works and who's working in robots and sex. So the understanding was a lot of people, they are very skeptical about human relations. And there could be like thousands of reasons. The biggest reason is that they are scared of being judged. So they start feeling more comfortable with the machine. And judgment has always been the precedent of why a lot of people do not talk about sexual wellbeing.
00:27:56
Speaker
they don't talk about themselves they don't talk about other people because they just are scared of being judged when you started out you saw sex shops in europe and then you got curious you went in so i remember this particular incident i was in my college so yeah i was 21 22 and i had gone to a college trip to bombay and they have this place called fashion point something like that and this was my first college kind of trip
00:28:25
Speaker
to Bombay and I saw these televallas right out there full of dildos. Really? Yeah and vibrators and I was like dude what's happening in Bombay? Oh my god I had no idea about that. Did you buy anything? Did you inquire?
00:28:42
Speaker
I didn't know buy anything but it was 2006 I had seen those things in porn but and I was just freaked out that somebody selling it on so you know those thelas which sell you know imported rubbish yeah electronic stuff right and they at one side of it was just dildos yeah but you were curious why do you think you did not go and buy yeah so first of all I did not need a dildo but
00:29:12
Speaker
I didn't even ask. But do we have sex shops in India? Do you know any? They're all underground. But e-commerce is pretty open. But otherwise it's all underground. But e-commerce is allowed to sell this. You can't have a physical shop.
00:29:32
Speaker
You see everything you can have. It's a very big gray area. Honestly, I'm not a lawyer, so I can't be a complete judge of what is right and what is wrong here. But I do know there's a problem. And the problem is nobody knows exactly what law is.
00:29:49
Speaker
So just think about it. Like even when I wanted to start vertical.life, a lot of people in the startup sector itself, they told me not to register in India, even though I'm not doing anything legal. You know, but the reason was like, there would be so many complications. They would be like, you know, it's going to become really difficult. And then you just say that, okay, what is the easier way of doing it? So now I'm getting more curious. What do you mean by these underground sex shops in India? And where are they? Palika Bazaar in CP.
00:30:17
Speaker
Ah, now I come to think of it. Yeah. So that Bombay experience is similar to a Palika kind of market. Yeah. Chani Chok. I have not seen Dildos and Palika. You need to go again. And what do they all sell? So Dildos is one thing, but I'm sure there are loads of other things.
00:30:37
Speaker
See in India, most of the time what happens is that we need to understand one thing that people are not that well aware. So when they're not well aware and when you talk about sex toys, most of the time they just understand two things. One is a vibrator and that is because thanks to Nokia, you know that old phone that we used to have, 1100, yeah.
00:30:56
Speaker
So that was considered to be one of the best vibrators for women. And the second thing is dildos. That's all they know. So even when I keep on talking to a lot of people who think that I'm into sex toys, these are the two things that they keep on asking. And then I'm like, you know what? There are so many things that it's not even funny.
00:31:13
Speaker
like yesterday night and in fact i was talking to somebody in the morning that we are trying to do a research paper that i got this product if suppose if you want to showcase it it's a it's a it's a butt plug led butt plug so think about it you know it will like shine those led seven colors
00:31:34
Speaker
So, so things are wild. There are a lot of things available. But in India, you also we have to realize that, you know, the only like two or three things are available in the underground market because people do get them. People would not get something which is very, very complicated. Very interesting. Now, I know you run this, but
00:31:50
Speaker
You are also an expert on everything sex and you talk to all the experts not just in India but you're connected to the porn industry in the US, you know the wellness people, you know the therapists. So I have more broader questions and because we are both Indians, I would love to understand why is there no Indian porn site? Why do Indian entrepreneurs not go after this market?
00:32:16
Speaker
One is because Indian actually porn for a very long time was predominantly white. We want white. We want to experience white people. And there's a very big tussle that's actually happening in the porn industry right now. If you see any porn video,
00:32:34
Speaker
in most of the porn videos, you'll always see that, you know, what is a black guy doing? A black guy is either, you know, a repairman or is a slave or, you know, those of those menial jobs. But you will. But it would be very difficult to find porn where a black guy or a person of color is at a very high position. So when that happens, that actually starts redeveloping into, you know, what kind of storylines you're going to have.
00:33:01
Speaker
what kind of things that, you know, will come out of it. So I think that's also a very big reason. And the second most important reason is like right now, porn industry is really suffering. And that is because of all the tubes that are available. So you get to see free porn on Pornhub. You get to see free porn on Exhamster. You're not paying. But there was a time when these porn sites could make enough money by just having people register. And you know, you pay per click.
00:33:28
Speaker
these are like two reasons but it's also about there are a lot of porn Indian movies which are created but they're also underground and then what they do is they usually put it on one of these tubes like Pornhub. So I just think that it also is very important about the legal laws and about how people consider it to be a good you know a good work like I'll give you an example of myself like whenever I post something about
00:33:53
Speaker
what we are doing, I get a lot of DMs from my friends who are from the startup industry, but I do not get a lot of retweets. So people are ashamed to be associated with it. Yeah. So like if you're ashamed, you can't go home and say that, you know, mom, I've raised so much money and I'm going to make porn movies. How's that? So let me do a disclaimer. Mom, dad, please do not listen to my podcast because we are going to talk about a lot more things which are going to be very embarrassing.
00:34:21
Speaker
Yeah, and I hope my parents also don't watch it. No, they should listen. Everybody should listen. Otherwise, we will be stuck in those olden ages. Yeah, it's crazy. That's true. I'm pretty sure that porn, people say that porn is bad, but porn also is not bad.
00:34:42
Speaker
it actually provides a lot of people a lot of insights but it's also about you know if you look at porn you should look at it as any other media any other entertainment and usually what people are asking for is what sells so when we were talking about you know color that has been selling for so long you know that's an aspiration that we have and that's why we have porn which is you know specified to that area but now
00:35:06
Speaker
I've never thought of porn of being racist till you just called it out. And I've never analyzed it like that. But don't you think you're taking it too far? No, that's not just me. That's the entire industry that's talking about it. I'm just sharing what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing from people because that was how the question started. What I believe is completely different. I don't consume porn that often.
00:35:30
Speaker
I'm just saying that what happened, and it's been happening for so long, if you go today and you do a research on the biggest porn producers in the past 30 years, 90% of them are white, all the porn stars that you can think of, even if you don't know their names, just think about them. Yeah, I'm thinking about them.
00:35:51
Speaker
We have to do the podcast. But OK, what do you think is the future? So do you think you will see in five or 10 years in content being produced in India websites?
00:36:05
Speaker
being run out of India, do you think that's going to happen? That has actually started happening. Really? Yeah, we do have a few amazing content centric platforms that are coming out of India.
Emerging Indian Platforms and Inclusivity
00:36:19
Speaker
But it's also, you know, they are talking from a very like what I've seen, like, you know, I might be completely wrong.
00:36:28
Speaker
but like they are not talking about a lot of stuff. Some of them are actually assuming or they are completely catering to cisgender people. So it's either LGBT or it's cisgender. So people are not talking about asexuality, people are not talking about pronouns and pronounced just not from sexuality point of view even like from a professional point of view even when you're not even going out and say hey I'm a sexual wealthy you know a sexual person
00:36:55
Speaker
These few things are still missing. Like how are you supposed to ask what is your pronoun? Like you've not given me the right to assume that you use the pronoun he. I should be asking you. And likewise. And this is how globally the things are changing. But in India, things are still at a very nascent stage. But when you talk about 10 years,
00:37:16
Speaker
I think things are going to change. People have started becoming very vocal. You see on Instagram, people are talking about it. People are talking about gender. People are talking about sexuality. People are still not talking about porn because they've still not been made aware of how porn industry works. So I think
00:37:37
Speaker
OK. I think it's pretty positive. How does the porn industry work? So I am curious.
How Does the Porn Industry Operate?
00:37:43
Speaker
Porn industry works as any other industry. Porn industry. So there's supply of these demands. Yes, there's supply. There's demand. And if you have worked in the entertainment sector, so there are writers who write stories. And then there are actors who are specialized into porn.
00:38:02
Speaker
And these are producers. So producers have different channels through which they will publicize or they will release those videos. Most of them are movies. There are investors who invest. Most of the people who work in the porn industry, they're well educated. They know what they're talking about.
00:38:25
Speaker
they are from ivy leagues as well they are phd holders as well and they're also like you know people who've just started like 10th or 12th it's completely if you take bollywood that's one industry for you then there are awards there are hollywood awards that happen there are awards which happen in germany some some porn stars are making millions some porn stars are not able to make millions because
00:38:46
Speaker
their deals are not properly done. There are lawyers who actually just work in the porn industry, they just specify, you know, like how you have a celebrity lawyers. Likewise, you have scouts, you have the marketing agents, then a lot of these porn site
00:39:03
Speaker
Pawn Stars, they decide that, hey, you know what, I just want to work alone. So they do have my fan accounts where they make more money on the side if they want to. And if they're not as big as few of the Pawn Stars are. So it's completely same. You'll talk to them, you'll be completely amazed. Like I remember the first chat that I was supposed to have, I was really scared because, oh my God, you know, what am I going to be talking about? Or who are these guys? I was so in awe of them. And once you start talking, it's completely same. There's no difference.
00:39:32
Speaker
Sorry, you lost me there. Are you saying there's a porn award, like an Oscar? Yeah, there are multiple. Oh, let me just Google that. Please do. Porn awards. OK. The porn awards are called Avian awards, which are
00:39:48
Speaker
So Avian is a media house. It works with the adult industry. So they work with pawn sites, they work with people who are working with pawn. There's a complete tech involved in the adult industry. They have CRA models. There's everything same that you can think of. Yeah. So they just did the 37th Avian Awards. For the last 37 years, they've been doing these awards. Oh, my God.
00:40:16
Speaker
I know about the tech. I know that the tech, especially video compression and any kind of video related technology, these guys are the first adopters. And there's a lot of money if you are in video tech for one. But I just didn't know the other side. That's what I'm saying. It's completely like any entertainment industry that you can think of in the world.
00:40:45
Speaker
as simple as that. The only reason why it's struggling right now is because of the advent of tubes. So now something very interesting that has started coming in is aggregators in their field. Aggregators make it a point that they also pay these guys, pay the producers, which was not happening before. So tubes, usually what happened is if I have downloaded a video, then I will upload it on Pornhub, for example.
00:41:10
Speaker
And then it's gone, it's up. I'm not making money. I stopped making money. But with aggregators, at least I can still make money. So they have started becoming, they started understanding that, hey, I want to work with aggregators. And a lot of people who are in the adult industry, I think that's a better term to use, they have
00:41:28
Speaker
started venturing to sexual wellbeing from a complete B2C point of view. There was this initiative in New Zealand. It's a lovely art if you see. So, two porn stars, they ring a bell and the mom opens and they say that, you know what, your kid is watching and
00:41:46
Speaker
getting all the information from porn and watching us. And then the kid comes out. It's a fabulous, um, and it has been done with the government in New Zealand. So, so the adult industry itself has also started graduating towards sexual well-being industry, which is, which is huge.
Collaboration with Adult Industry Professionals
00:42:02
Speaker
Like even political.live, we've collaborated with two, two producers and, and they want to work on completely sexual well-being content. Like how can we work? How can we start, you know, projecting what exactly is happening and how can we help people?
00:42:15
Speaker
Okay, that's very interesting. Now, let's come back to India. Now, when you and me were offline, we were discussing these dating apps in India. You know, the Lamor, the Bigo, a bunch of them, right? I don't know how to categorize them. So, I think, first of all, do you know about these apps? What do you feel about these apps? I do. Would you call them dating apps?
00:42:43
Speaker
They don't actually graduate into dating so but they are actually catering to the same need which is there are a lot of people who are alone and they just need somebody to talk to and somebody to listen to. So from that logic it's pretty similar to dating apps but otherwise I would not call them dating apps because they are not maturing into relationships but then you know it's like I honestly I do not even have an opinion of what we will call them because most of the dating apps also you do not expect to find relationships.
00:43:12
Speaker
No, but I would call Tinder, so what I've heard is Tinder is a hookup app, but something like a bumble or what is the Indian name, I forgot the Indian one. Truly madly. Those are genuine, right?
00:43:28
Speaker
See, what do you mean by genuine? Every app would have seen people. Yeah, so all kind of people. But yeah, still, there would be people looking for love. So, OK, I did some experiments. Two years back, I made an account in multiple apps. And my thing was just to figure out what should be my target audience and what exactly people are looking out for.
00:43:47
Speaker
I must have met like not too many people because it was really exhausting. What you realize is that it's pretty easy to find dates like when people want to come and meet you. That's pretty easy and it's all across. Even on Tinder it's pretty easy. Men are desperate for somebody to ask and write questions. So most of these dates that I went to I just was asked, I must have asked like three or four questions each and people just could you know talk on and on and on and on and on
The Role of Indian Dating Apps
00:44:17
Speaker
and on.
00:44:17
Speaker
So it just showcases you that, you know, men have so much to talk about as well, but they don't have people to think about or, you know, people, it's always like, you know, women, unfortunately, has always had an upper hand. And when they do have this, you know, such apps like, like, Lamor, just gives you an opportunity as a man that, okay, fine, you know what, I really want to just go out and talk. I just want to vomit what's happening. And there's some place where I can. And also because when we look at India, we are a frustrated country.
00:44:44
Speaker
We don't talk about sex. We don't even use this term. For our listeners, let's let's deep dive deep dive into it and understand what what do they do? So if I download the Lamora and or so there is Liview, Lamora, Tumil, I'm just googling all of that. And I think Lamora is now banned also by because it's Chinese or something.
00:45:10
Speaker
But basically you download the app and then suddenly the girls start pinging you saying that, hey, I want to chat with you, chat with you, chat with you. And then you have to pay to chat with them. And what I figured out is there's a chatbot at the end of it which had pictures of girls.
00:45:27
Speaker
And that's how they're making money. Is that true? Yeah, it's true. And it's completely similar to what was happening like long back when people used to get those numbers. But there is always a real person behind it, right? Here, there's not even a real person. You're talking to
00:45:46
Speaker
I actually know someone who used to send messages. He was a guy and he had like 15 other men working and they used to send such messages. It happens. He actually told me something very interesting. He said,
00:46:02
Speaker
whenever you're sending a marketing email to people, always sign off as a female because people end up opening more emails, which has a female signing off. There's no new phenomena. It's about, you know, how do you keep on maturing or how do you keep on making things better and more efficient? So initially people used to call a number and they were used to a woman who used to talk to you. Then now it's like, you know, how do you make it more efficient from an app point of view? Let's have bots and bots actually can understand the initial discussions.
00:46:32
Speaker
Only the problems happen when, you know, like when you start having mature discussion, like there's a platform called Ephoria and they're our partners. So if you open them, you know, all the content content is vertical.life. What they're doing is they are catering to different sexualities and people who identify as different sexualities. But what they do is they have few scenarios created. So scenarios would be conference and romance. I'm just giving a random example.
00:47:01
Speaker
So what happens is there's a bot who's chatting with you. They will have four or five messages from the bot, and then the bot will ask you, what do you want more? And then you have choices, and then you pick one choice. And the conversation starts going accordingly. And it's actually funny, because when I was experimenting with it, I was actually smiling in between.
00:47:20
Speaker
You know, like a board is complimenting you and that's so funny. But if you think about it, people actually want that confirmation. People want to feel special. People want to still feel human and people still want to feel hot. And bots are how it works because otherwise it will be so difficult if you have 100 million people at one time, 100 million women talking to you. That will be very difficult.
00:47:44
Speaker
especially in the initial conversation. So there are so many people who are just frustrated to talk to somebody. Do you know this phenomena in Japan where they have virtual girlfriend, virtual pets? Do you think something like that would work in India? See, what happens in Japan is people live alone. In India, most of the people do not live alone.
00:48:09
Speaker
So people live in families, there are joint families. So it's a very social country to be in. And in fact, this was one of the discussion and I was asking this question. And according to these guys who are really working with robots and sexual robots, they say that you can expect something of this sort in the next 50 years when the difference between what is a robot and what is a real human being would completely vanish.
00:48:34
Speaker
So I might expect then it would be a better time to think about. But if you think about right now, like even you, you know, like you joke that I hope that my parents don't listen to this. So just imagine thinking of having, you know, a reward at your house right now, a sexual companion. People will completely think, oh, you're going crazy.
00:48:54
Speaker
I totally agree to it, but I don't think it'll take 50 years. I think another 10 years, and you're there. Hopefully. See, robots are already done. So there's a conference that happens every year, and I'll send you the link of the conference. It's Love Robots, I think, and it's David Lee. So there are robots, and that's what they've been working on. See, the major problem is not about creating somebody who looks like a human being. The problem is about conversation.
00:49:22
Speaker
Because you really also want to talk to that, you know, like thing. You know what? I've heard that, you know, Alexa or Google Home can be done in a better way. But these organizations don't want to do it because it will scare people. So that's why the voices are so robotic instead of they could just easily do it in a very natural voice. But I've heard Amitabh Bachchan is going to be the voice next year. Yeah, I'm sure they'll charge a arm and a leg as a subscription for Amitabh Bachchan.
00:49:52
Speaker
I don't have an idea, but I think that would be really cool. But when you're talking about people being scared, and that was what this conference actually talks about, two times in their six years, they have been banned, and all these guys are academicians. So they're not even completely from adult industry, or they are not scantily dressed.
00:50:15
Speaker
No, no, they are scientists. Yeah, they are scientists. And that's the thing. People are scared of everything. Why are we scared of sex? Even if you go and you research on Google about sex or if you search on any of the social networks, most of the time you would not even get to see things because they are shadow banned.
00:50:35
Speaker
So it's just like everything. We have made things so complicated. And before coming into Tickle.live, I thought, you know what? It's going to be easy. It's going to be fun. But now we started understanding the problems. Now we've started understanding why so much is not in the open. Because it's also being made that it can't be easy. We also had one or two articles of ours, which was sent by other people. And Google just said that we can't index them.
00:51:04
Speaker
And if you read the articles, they would absolutely fine because everything is automated. So it's just like we might be talking about what is going to happen in 10 years, what is going to happen in 20, 30, 40 years. But we also have to understand that there's so much censorship around that. How is that going to happen? We don't know, even if everything is available. So I know Google censorship sucks, but you have no option. You have Google or Apple and you have to
00:51:30
Speaker
There are only two devils left right now. Absolutely. So that's why a lot of podcasts which people are talking about sexual well-being, they will categorize it under relationships or they'll categorize it under lifestyle. Even if I'm looking out for something from sexual well-being point of view, I might not think about lifestyle.
00:51:50
Speaker
unless I'm super bright or I'm from marketing. So that means I desperately wanted to hear somebody tell me that if I'm feeling this, it's absolutely fine, but I'm not able to find that even though I'm desperately looking out for it. Okay, coming back to those apps. Now, there are these people who are using these apps to vent out their frustration. Do you think that's the right way or is there a better way for them to talk to people? And this is the best way I can describe.
00:52:21
Speaker
Sexting is not bad. And that's what they're doing most of the time. But sexting without a consent is bad. Sending unsolicited dick. With bots, they don't need a consent. Yeah, then it's absolutely fine. It's their money. It's their time. And if they have some frustration, why not take it out on them?
00:52:39
Speaker
you know, rather than going out and sitting and, you know, like teasing a woman, if I'm assuming, you know, if you're just talking about men and we're talking about heterosexual men. So I don't think so. There's a problem. I don't think so.
Can Bots Offer Therapeutic Interaction?
00:52:53
Speaker
Like, you know, people saying sexting is bad or people saying that, you know, talking to people bad, talking about sexuality is bad.
00:52:59
Speaker
As long as it is done in the right way, it's not bad. But when a bot tells you that I'm not a bot, but I'm a human being, then that is bad. Because the person did not give a consent. I'm giving you consent to talk to a bot. I gave you a consent to talk to a human being. So what is the right way for them? How do they relieve their frustration? Because they're still in India. How do they improve themselves?
00:53:27
Speaker
See, people never have a problem whether they are talking to a bot or to a human being. So if you tell them that, you know, you will be talking to a bot and when they talk and they realize the, you know, the mature level of the bot, then they would not have a problem because they would know at least, you know what, whatever I'm saying, I can actually go all out. You know, I've given money. I know, you know, this bot is not going to say anything to me. Let me just take out everything that's in me. You know, that's what you do in counseling. That's what you do in therapy. So it's also kind of therapy.
00:53:56
Speaker
But wouldn't that encourage their behavior? See, I'm not an expert as such because I'm not a therapist. But I just think that, you know, a lot of times what happens is we people have not been communicating with their needs and desires and that has cut down into what is happening around the world. So if you see countries where sexuality is pretty open and you can talk about it, you will see less a number of cases against women, less a number of race, less a number of molestation cases.
00:54:23
Speaker
That's my opinion that we have to open it up and if you're not comfortable talking to people, then talking to bots is perfect. When I just started my job, my boss had actually told me one thing that if your client is really not understanding what you're trying to say and you're really in a very foul mood, write an email
00:54:46
Speaker
but put it in draft and you will understand like you know once you've saved it to a draft you will feel light and then you can start thinking right so it's the same way you're feeling frustrated you are feeling horny and you don't have anybody around so there are two things which are you're going to do one is you're just going to go and find the first woman if you're that desperate or if there is a platform where actually you can talk then why not or if there's a platform where you can really understand what's happening to you why not
00:55:13
Speaker
That's a super interesting business idea now for anybody out there who wants to get their hands dirty in the adult industry. How do we reach you? How do people reach out to you? I know they can go to tickle.life but how do they follow you?
00:55:35
Speaker
They can, so Tickle.life is on Twitter. Actually, Twitter is the best Twitter and Reddit, but if anybody wants to get in touch with me, you can just search for my name, Sethi Shakun on Twitter, or you can just drop me an email at shakunattickle.life and we can take it from there. But if you're just thinking that, you know, you can discuss your sexual problems with me, then I think then you can just directly go to the platform.
00:56:02
Speaker
That's awesome. Okay, Shakun. Thanks a lot for talking to us. We had a great time. So guys, upgrade work now. You will be listening to Update with Knuckles, a production of the 14.13. Don't forget to like and subscribe.