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Storytelling for Bharat | Ranjeet Pratap Singh @ Pratilipi
206 Plays3 years ago
The universe is made up of stories, where everyone is a storyteller.
In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Co-founder and CEO, Pratilipi. He is an alumnus of FMS, Delhi and has worked with Vodafone before starting off with his entrepreneurial journey.
Belonging to a modest background, Ranjeet has always been a voracious reader and preferred reading content in Hindi. However, he found it extremely difficult to get the books of his choice online, since most of the websites had English content.
To bridge this gap, Ranjeet launched Pratilipi in 2015, as a storytelling platform, primarily focussing on Indian languages, thereby allowing people to share the stories in the language of their choice. And today, Pratilipi is India’s largest vernacular storytelling platform with over 350,000 writers and 28 million monthly active readers in 12 languages.
Tune in to this episode to hear Ranjeet speak about how Pratilipi is opening the gateway to vernacular literature and making it easily available for the readers.
What you must not miss!
- The power of User Generated Content
- Monetization strategy
- Growth hack: Simplify your product
- Plans for expanding into different geographies
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Founder Thesis Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay. Hi, this is Aurabh. And you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated charter founders in the country. And we want to learn how to build a unicorn.
Ranjit Pratilipi Background
00:00:28
Speaker
Hi, I'm Ranjit. I'm one of the co-founders and the CEO at Pratipi. Pratipi is one of India's largest storytelling platforms across different formats and languages. We all love listening to stories. I think it's something that's genetically encoded in us. And Ranjit, the founder of Pratipi, was no different. He grew up in semi-urban rural parts of UP, spending a lot of time either playing cricket or reading fiction.
00:00:53
Speaker
And as he went off to pursue higher education, he realized that there is a dearth of options for people who like to read stories in their vernacular language. And this was the germ of an idea which today is Pratilipi, which has raised almost 80 million dollars of funding till date and is the largest platform for vernacular content
Inspiration Behind Pratilipi
00:01:15
Speaker
in India.
00:01:15
Speaker
Here's Ranjit talking about that process of moving from a secure, stable job in Vodafone, where he was doing sales, to becoming a founder. So Ranjit, tell me about your origin story. I was born in a very small village in the rivalry district of Uttar Pradesh. So it's like a less than 1000 population village.
00:01:37
Speaker
My father was in army. My mom is a homemaker. We used to live in a joint family. So most people were farmers, but some people would do our jobs. And then there have been a bunch of people in the family and extended family who have worked in armed forces in different forms. You used to stay in like the containment area? Sometimes. So I spent a bunch of time with my father.
00:01:59
Speaker
Till class 7 beginning of class 7 so at that time I would stay in the cantonment areas But my last like my father's last posting was in a border area. So in that case families are not allowed So at that time I was studying in a city living in a rented one room with my mom and when father it had I was again
Ranjit's Early Life and Education
00:02:20
Speaker
And your education was like Hindi medium, UP board? Was it English medium? Mostly, funnily enough, there's something called Hindi slash English medium. So some subjects are in English, some are in Hindi, mostly in Kendrai with the Alias, mostly in Diabrai, a little bit in Lucknow, a little bit in Jaipur. Okay, okay, okay. And like what outside of school, what did you like to do as a kid? So mostly, I only had two hobbies.
00:02:46
Speaker
One was playing cricket and second was basically reading. So I would usually have a deal with the shopkeepers of bookstores nearby my place within like a kilometer or two, where I'll go to their shop and I'll kind of take care of their shop for a few hours. And in return, I'll get to read whatever I want for free. So that and cricket were my two favorite hobbies. How come you got hooked on to reading? But generally, you know, reading doesn't come naturally to kids. So I think my
00:03:15
Speaker
Uncle, like my father's elder brother, is a writer. And he used to read quite a bit. And then my mom reads a lot of fiction, mostly like novels like Kesho Pandit and Ved Pratash Sharma, things that you typically find on railway stations and bus tours, bus stops. So I think looking at them maybe might have been one of the influences. Another one might have been that because I did not have big hobbies. So I think reading just became like an escape mechanism of how do you kind of cope with that.
00:03:45
Speaker
And these were like Hindi novels mostly, yeah. Starting these were comics. Starting like Champa, Nanda Mama, Balhans. Then proper comics like Nagra, Subhat Mandudru, Doga. Then literature. And then sometimes novels and all. Novels and all, I think I only started after Class 8th or 9th. Mainly because I was not really allowed to read novels. But like what language were these in? Almost all of that would be Hindi.
00:04:13
Speaker
Like maybe 2% English, 98%, maybe less than 2%. So what was your ambition when you were in school? What did you think?
Career Aspirations and Engineering Journey
00:04:23
Speaker
Actually, it will keep on changing. So there was a long period of time where ARMY was the first choice. I applied for NDA five times. I cleared the written exam all five times. Went for medical, went for interviews, actually SSB interviews four times, got rejected all four times.
00:04:41
Speaker
In parallel there have been times where I've thought of becoming a professional cricketer, a cricket commentator, a lawyer, a politician, a farmer, a bunch of different things. So then what did you finally end up doing after school? So after school did you like drop for NDA and all? Like did you drop a few years? I did not drop for NDA but I did take a drop mainly because well I was so like I was so
00:05:07
Speaker
both confident and like, what is the right word? I so much wanted to join army at the time. And at some point, I mean, became an ego issue that, you know, I'm so smart, and I'm so fit, and how can I not be selected, that I did not apply for any of the engineering entrance examinations. So after class 12, when finally I said, Okay, this thing is not working out. So I took a drop here so that I could appear for engineering entrance examinations. And then I intended my engineering.
00:05:33
Speaker
Okay. And this was in Bhubaneswar. So how was that experience like being away from UP and completely different state? So it was actually pretty good. So in like the drop year that I took, so in general, my mom was very productive of me, primarily because my elder brother was an elder sister was spoiled by my grandparents. And in general, like I was the one kid that they would call like a studio, a smart, whatever you want to call it, you know, Ghar Kanaam, Roshan Karega types.
00:06:02
Speaker
So, for example, I was not allowed to fly kites. I was not allowed to ride a bicycle, just in case any of these things end up injuring me. So I think that one year that I took as a drop, I was in Kanpur. And that one year, I think, got into a lot of fights, did a lot of stuff that teenagers typically tend to do. I wanted to basically not stay close to, like, privately Kanpur, like, no. So I thought that if I do, then the company will remain roughly similar, which would mean that I will end up doing the same things again. Even if I don't want to, it's just that
00:06:31
Speaker
you kind of get sucked into it. So that was the main reason of why I decided to go as far away from UP as possible. And Monisha slash KIT happened to be that. So I think it was good also because like I was starting from a clean slate, new friends, new work. So I like that. Okay. And did you like opt for placements after KIT? I already had a couple of offers even before placements.
00:07:01
Speaker
But I did certain placements as well. But I was also pretty clear that at that time, like most kids, I was very extra confident slash ever again. So at that time, the plan was that I'll get into either I'm Ahmed or a famous daily, and I'll go into an MBA. And if I don't, for some reason, I don't get into these two, then I'll go into a job. And as I said, like I already had, I think, three, maybe off campus offers. And then I think
00:07:27
Speaker
How did you get these off-campus offers? Like you were applying on job portals or something? I wasn't actually, funnily enough.
00:07:36
Speaker
So I was, at that time in third year, so my engineering college was a tier two, tier three engineering college. And generally from tier two, tier three engineering colleges, a lot of times people start preparing for MBA inference examinations. And at that time, I was very, very popular in the test taking Janta as someone who is very smart and who is going to like 100% or at least 99% of the times you are going to get a hundred percentile, not just that you're going to like clear CAT exams, more like you are going to be a hundred percent.
00:08:04
Speaker
So I think the job offers that I got were more from reputation, less from actual work.
Choosing FMS for Higher Education
00:08:10
Speaker
So I think two out of the three were, for example, B-School prep type companies. One was a startup type. The premise was basically, we want raw smartness, and then you can figure out how to do it. Got it. OK. So why FMS? I have never, of course, I understand. Well, actually, neither of these were rational reasons. Both of these were emotional reasons.
00:08:33
Speaker
At least at that time, it was well-known as a term called VIMV, so well-known Institute of Management in Western India. It was just what I started to know when I thought of MBA. That's how I heard about MBA for the first time. FMS, because the way FMS works is a lot closer to the way I think world should work. I don't like relative dating, for example. I don't like rat races in general, where everybody has a single goal and they are moving in a single direction, doing all the same things, all of that.
00:09:03
Speaker
And then I don't think higher education should be something that should be very expensive. So I think FMS just aligned with how I think the world should be. How is FMS different from other B schools? Among the top tier B schools, FMS is the only one that doesn't have relative reading. At least it didn't when I was there. I don't know if that's true anymore.
00:09:24
Speaker
FMS didn't really have the rat race in the sense like a lot of people would actually spend let's say seven, eight hours a day pursuing whatever they wanted. Like you did not need to study for like 15 hours to get a good placement. And then the fees at my time was 35,000, 40,000 for two years combined. I actually ended up making five lakh rupees studying at FMS as against spending whatever 15, 16 lakhs by doing anything.
00:09:48
Speaker
How did you make five lakhs of internships? Internship is one part. I made about a lakh and half internship. But also, I would participate in a lot of different events and competitions. And again, because you have so much time at FMS compared to, again, top tier B schools, which meant that I could just go and participate in 15, 20 different B-plan competitions, consulting competitions, whatever. OK. So in a way, your roots for entrepreneurship were kind of set in FMS.
00:10:19
Speaker
I think before that, my deafness definitely would have helped. I think when I was a kid, I don't care about money, but also I don't want to be in a situation where I have to care about money. I don't want to have to worry about, when I was a kid, for example, I did not want to have to worry about that, okay, I want to eat paani ke vataashe, so now I need to figure out a way to get food. And which is what would happen. So I do random odd things to make sure that I have food.
00:10:47
Speaker
For example, in summers, let's say, when the actual harvesting happens, people will take all the major grain particles, but there will be some grain particles which are just thrown over the field because, well,
Early Entrepreneurial Spirit
00:10:59
Speaker
there was air and so on and so forth. So I'll go and I'll pick that up. I'll get it clean. I'll sell it on a shop and I'll make like 15 rupees. That 15 rupees would make sure that I can do random stuff. Again, I'd never had expensive hobbies. It was more like I did not want to have to worry about money.
00:11:19
Speaker
I got placed into Vodafone. I think I did my internship with Citi and then I joined Vodafone as a final placement. Why Vodafone?
00:11:37
Speaker
coveted jobs are like investment banking, consulting, you know, mostly because I never, as in my purpose of MBA was never to find a job. My purpose was MBA was basically spend two years with smart people, having fun and just doing random talks and figuring out random stuff. So I, when I went into FMS, I think I was ranked two in the intents exam. When I got out, I think I was probably in bottom 30, maybe bottom 25.
00:12:05
Speaker
So Vodafone was probably one of the companies that gave me an offer. Okay, okay, okay. So that Vodafone, like what was the role there? Normally, in most companies after, again, Tier 1B schools, you are typically hired as a management train, which means that you go through different stints in different verticals. So I did a stint in channel sales, I did a stint in marketing, I did a stint in retail.
00:12:33
Speaker
And then I got a full-time role as a channel, as a telecom prepaid sales, which is called channel sales in telecom. Which is like hardcore on the field kind of role. And did you enjoy that kind of role? So I enjoyed the role. I enjoyed my work. The problem was that telecom is in general like a very, very hated field. When I say telecom, I mean like prepaid sales in telecom. In fact, I don't know if that's true anymore, but at least at the time there were a bunch of surveys where
00:13:03
Speaker
So insurance sales is the most hated job and then repaid sales is the second most hated job. So there's a lot of unethical, illegal things that go along to make up for the numbers. There's a lot of shouting and abusing at your team and all of that. I did not really like how it worked, but I enjoyed the job itself also because I'm a very ambitious, aggressive person. In sales, it's easy to prove why you are better than everybody else. When I joined, I think my territory was
00:13:30
Speaker
either the worst or the second worst for 15 years. When I left, we were ranked one for three out of the four months and trying to do the other one. And that gives a different kind of five per sales guide. Which directory did you get? I was ending at the one. Okay.
00:13:51
Speaker
If you like to hear stories of founders, then we have tons of great stories from entrepreneurs who have built billion dollar businesses. Just search for the founder thesis podcast on any audio streaming app like Spotify, Ghana, Apple podcasts, and subscribe to the show. So what made you quit Vodafone? Like you quit in less than two years. Like, you know, what drove that? So the tipping point was that
00:14:21
Speaker
My superiors slash my reporting manager and his reporting manager, they switched somebody from my team to go to a different location. He did not want to because of a personal family issue. That was the tipping point, but in general, I was just not happy with how it was working. I wanted to work with people. It was very slow. Generally, corporates are typically
Leaving Vodafone and Startup Journey
00:14:44
Speaker
slow. They are very risk averse.
00:14:45
Speaker
They don't think about 10 years out. They think too much about what happens next week and next month and so on. That's fine. Again, I like sales because I like acting on things. It's just that I think acting on things has to be towards something. As one example, I was the ASM when M-Pesa was launched in Ahmedabad. I thought it was a fantastic product. If they thought of it as an internet product, I don't think there was any room for something like a PTM to basically come up and become this big.
00:15:15
Speaker
They were selling it as a telecom product, which is also fine. But they were just not even open to listening, okay, why this is not the right approach. So as a random example, they would spend like, if I remember correctly, I think I had like a budget of two growths a month to promote MPSA. But users still have to pay money to both put money into MPSA and take money out. Like you're trying to kill cash. There's no money for taking out cash from my pocket or putting cash back in my pocket. And you're any which is spending more money than that on marketing.
00:15:44
Speaker
If you want to make it work, it has to be seamless like cash where you cannot charge money just to put money, to load money into an MPS account or to take money out from an MPS account. You're like, no, that's how you make money, you have to be profitable. Yeah, I remember one time MPS was pretty much mandatory if you were getting a sim from Vodafone. Like, in the sense case, they would push. That is because there was so much margin for both the sales people and the retailer that they would try and push that.
00:16:15
Speaker
Okay, so then like, you know, did you put with some idea in mind, I will look for another job, I will do my own job. At that time, nobody really believed when I was saying like, I have no freaking clue, I'll figure out. But like my plan A was basically, and coincidentally, as an engineering guy, I was clear that I'm going to start a company when I was in B school, I was clear that I'm going to start a company someday. When I quit my job at that time, I did not want to start a company.
00:16:43
Speaker
The plan was to find the early-stage startup, let's say, pre-series D, pre-series D, and then basically beg them for a job. The premise was that I had worked already in the strategy, in retail, in sales, in marketing, and I was an engineer by training before that. I can do a little bit of whatever. I took four months break just to meet a lot of people, including friends and any founder who take a meeting.
00:17:11
Speaker
And the plan was to find somebody that I really liked and then just beg them for a job. I liked some people, but did not like anybody enough to say, give me a job. And that's how activity kind of came. Then what happened? You could not find any compelling job, but were you also exploring business ideas and talking to potential co-founders?
00:17:33
Speaker
Not talking to potential co-founders, they could have been potential co-founders because these were, again, either friends or founders themselves, but that was not the explicit reason. The explicit reason was to spend time with friends to brainstorm and to meet founders to see if I like someone. My last talk was in Bangalore. I spent some time in Delhi, some time Gurgaon, some time Pune, some time the last talk was in Bangalore because probabilistically, it seemed like Bangalore is the highest probability of where I would find a job because most of the tech startups were here.
00:18:02
Speaker
I would teach at times in the daytime to make sure I have some money. Afternoons, typically, I'll go and meet founders, and evenings, I'll typically have a drink or two and chat with friends on what makes sense, what can theoretically be possible, including my own ideas, but also other ideas which other companies are working on. How long did you do this? This whole month. Okay.
00:18:25
Speaker
And I think I was particularly biased towards two ideas at the time. One was Pratipi, one was something like Dansu, but it was a very different GTM plan. And Pratipi's idea had remained in my head when I was in first year of engineering college. But I did not want to pursue it because I did not think that I am a good fit for that idea. But this seemed like the best idea that I could think of at the time. And this was a problem that was close to my heart, any which case, from an emotional perspective, not from a racial perspective.
00:18:56
Speaker
Give it a shot. What was that problem? Like tell me about that. Like what in first year of engineering, what did you identify as a problem? When I went to my engineering college, I realized that Hindi content was simply not available that much. And if you remember, I have always been over a serious video. When I went to engineering college, I realized that like offline in Bhuneshwar, especially a bookstore can carry maybe 200, 300 Hindi titles, like 3000 total titles.
00:19:20
Speaker
And if you read as much as I did, you had read most of the good ones. Online, there wasn't really anything back in 2006. For English, there were still a few, but for Hindi, there was literally nothing. So I had to shift to reading English entirely. But also, I don't like being told what you cannot do, like in general, as a person. And this was literally the world saying that, okay, you have to shift to English or you have to stop reading, there is no other choice. What are the options on Kindle and all, like e-books?
00:19:47
Speaker
Even if there was, I don't even know if Kindle was there back then. Even if there was, there was no way in hell that I had the money to buy a Kindle. I wanted somebody to solve this problem from that time because I did not think that the world should be like this. I think the world should be more like
00:20:07
Speaker
people get to choose. Even if it's a wrong choice, it's your choice, and you get to decide whether you should do this or that or something else. Being told that you cannot read in Hindi and you only have to read in English or French or whatever, that doesn't sound like the kind of world that I want to live in. I wanted somebody to solve this. It's just that nobody had. So I thought, okay, nobody's actually solving this. I am not finding a company that I really like, so I kind of tried this out. So how did you decide to solve it? Did you decide to do...
00:20:37
Speaker
distribution of Hindi books offline or create an alternative to kindle which has Hindi books on it or what like so I as an eye generally can take a lot of pain and uncertainty in short term but in general I think more from a long-term perspective that is very clear that if I was going to build a business I did not mind failing but if I if it was to fail I wanted to fail in the first one two three years not like after ten years after I have already become very large and then like the business goes away
Building Pratilipi's Platform
00:21:06
Speaker
I wanted to make sure that the model that I'm going to pursue has some kind of strong network effect, so it's economies of scale, which basically makes a difference for somebody else to come and compete.
00:21:15
Speaker
So which is why it's very clear that I wanted to build a UGC platform, which is basically like a true marketplace. Think of it like WhatsApp, YouTube, basically. So that once you get to critical mass and UGC platforms are impossibly hard to build in general, but once you get to enough critical mass, then because you have more readers, more writers come to you because you have more writers, more readers come to you. So business kind of is very hard to compete against.
00:21:37
Speaker
I would never have built something like Kindle, even as in that there is a 0% chance because then it is basically about like who has more money to pay off more publishers. And today at that point, I might have had more money, but someday we chose would always have more money than as soon as he decided to come. Right, right. So I believe there is a startup called Wattapad. You heard? Wattpad, Wattpad. Alan is one of my favorite founders. Alan is the CEO of Wattpad.
00:22:05
Speaker
So that was like the inspiration to do a Wattpad, but for what I feel. The biggest inspiration was YouTube, but Wattpad was also one of the big inspirations. So there have been a bunch of inspirations along the way. So I really like Kura, what they were doing back then at least. Being a big fan of Adam Kura's CO. YouTube was like literally directly like the best
00:22:29
Speaker
let's say inspiration slash what you wanted to kind of move towards. But did you want to do video or did you want to do text? It's about how the company operates. It's not about text or video. Whatever. It's more like YouTube has truly democratized one form of content creation. So we want to do that with a lot of other forms. Okay. So what did you launch then? Like what was your go-to market and what did the first product look like?
00:22:56
Speaker
So in the beginning, we just started with online literature, text, basically. So that was essentially, in fact, the first product that we launched or the first version of the product that we launched was simply like a blog. So you can come and you can read stories. That is it. There's nothing else that you can do.
00:23:10
Speaker
primarily because we were very, very clear that this is a problem that we want to solve, but we had no clue or at least we did not want to kind of act like we are experts and we know everything that what the solution is going to look like. So we said, okay, we'll figure out solution along the way. So we had a hypothesis. I had made a chart paper of like, if this works, then this will happen. If this works, then this will happen. But the premise was we let the market features as we kind of go along. So the first version was basically simply a block types where people can come and read stories and poetry and novels and stuff like that.
00:23:38
Speaker
So that we can see if there are people who are at least interested in reading something. If they are, then we'll go to the next step. So that was the first one. Before we go to next, who is we here? So at that time, I think as in when we started, I got four of my friends as co-founders. And then over a period of time, of course, more and more people kind of stepped on track. And these were what, like from SMS or from college days or what?
00:24:04
Speaker
So one was my school batchmate, one was my drink oil batchmate, one was my batchmate from MBA, one was my colleague from Motorphone. Okay. Good mix of co-founders. Okay. So that's like, I mean, five co-founders sounds little unwieldy, you know, and especially in the early days, was there enough work for five co-founders? So honestly, I think
00:24:30
Speaker
The number one quality that a founder needs is being resourceful. So at that point in time, there's no way that I could have paid like market salary to smart people. So if I wanted to work with smart people, then the only way to make that work was to give out significantly more equity and get people as co-founders. That was the thing that we needed to get to that point. I don't think it's particularly about whether one co-founder is better or eight co-founders are better. I think it's more about like, what makes sense in that particular context. Okay, okay, okay.
00:24:59
Speaker
Five of you launched a blog and how did you generate content for it? Before actually launching to figure out if there's a real problem, it's a problem for me. That's great. That doesn't mean there's a business.
00:25:15
Speaker
What I did was I spoke to about 350, 400-odd authors and 350 around readers to try and understand the problem itself. The first thing that we did when we decided to launch was to go out to these 350, 400-odd people and try to convince them to basically put their content on the table. Most of them said no, because their point was like, if there are no readers, why would I take the effort to basically make an account and upload?
00:25:39
Speaker
So then we said, OK, you don't have to do anything. We will make your account. We will upload your content. If anything happens, we'll tell you. If somebody reads your story, we'll tell you. If somebody reviews your story, we'll tell you. All you have to do is basically give us a yes, give us a tool to do. So that is how we got the first maybe about 200 odd stories.
00:25:57
Speaker
Then we got about another 150 odd stories from public domain content, which is basically content which was written by a writer a long time back and now they have passed away and that story or the content has become public domain. So we got about 150 odd stories to put onto the platform. So I think this is how we seeded the supply side in the beginning. And how did you do the demand generation? How did you get the readers?
00:26:20
Speaker
Readers are mostly utilizing our own network, so we'll put posts on Facebook, Twitter, email, WhatsApp that we are launching this. Generally, a lot of times, we'll not even do this. We'll do more like, okay, just read this story on Pratipi. It's an awesome story. You should definitely read it. Because we had a lot of public domain content, so there were a lot of stories which were old but very famous, like Bodhan or Gabani. We'll put a post just to read Bodhan.
00:26:46
Speaker
It's one of the best stories ever written. So that is how we got the early part of readers. And then another thing which really, really helped was that for writers, once they saw that, you know, five people have read my story, then they shared with their friends that, you know what, my story is published on Pathik and you can go and read that. That helped generate a lot of early readership as well. Okay. Okay. So then tell me next version of production after this. So I think it was not like there was a big bang version. After that, we kept on launching newer features.
00:27:16
Speaker
So, for example, we started by launching, okay, as a reader, you can read or review a story.
Pratilipi's Expansion into New Media
00:27:22
Speaker
Then we launched that, you can follow your favorite writers so that if they publish a new story, you'll get a notification. Then we launched libraries so that you can add stuff to your library if you don't have time and you want to read it later.
00:27:32
Speaker
Then we launched a self-publishing part where writers don't have to send the content to us and then we upload it because we got to a scale where manually uploading content was becoming just impossibly hard. So we launched a part of the platform where writers would come and directly upload their content on their phone. Which would be like a medium or a corer. Which would be like a medium or a corer or whatever. So over a period of time, the product keeps on evolving. Tell me the journey.
00:28:01
Speaker
On a strong side, I wouldn't remember. As we typically launch or we typically deploy maybe 15 days a month. There's no way that I remember 15 deployments a month. But I mean, broad stroke evolution, like from text, you also moved on. So from that broad evolution of Bratilipi. And also, if you can tell me how
00:28:30
Speaker
The user growth also happened along with these milestones. Again, honest answer I wouldn't remember.
00:28:38
Speaker
But roughly, I think, so we have always focused on long-term and kind of trying to do the right thing. We haven't really focused primarily on growth. The premise was always that growth is a happy byproduct of trying to do the right thing. So in fact, apart from me, like nobody else in the team till about six months, till a year back for sure, like nobody really ever had targets or goals or KPIs or whatever. It was more like, okay, focus on whatever you think is the right thing to do and growth will happen as a byproduct.
00:29:04
Speaker
And even today, I think maybe five people in the team think about or have goals or targets in their mind. Most people are still focused on doing the right thing, and then growth happens as a right product.
00:29:16
Speaker
I wouldn't really remember exact milestones. In terms of new product launches, for the first four and a half, five years, I think we only focused on winning the online literature piece. In general, as an early-stage startup, you don't really have that many resources, both in terms of people, in terms of bandwidth, in terms of money, in terms of anything.
00:29:35
Speaker
So in order to focus on this use case and try to get it to a size where it actually makes sense as a business. So that's all that we did. Then I think towards the beginning of last year is when we felt confident that within online literature, now we have a sizable lead for everybody else in the market. And that is when we decided, okay, now is time to basically launch newer formats. And if you remember earlier, I was saying that Prathipi is a storytelling platform. It was never about literature or online literature, whatever it was. Basically, if you want to share a story with the rest of the world, you should be able to do that.
00:30:04
Speaker
irrespective of any language, irrespective of any format, irrespective of any geography. So we started with the Pratipi FM, which is an audio book product, audio book audio shows for us. Then we launched Pratipi comics, which is an online comics product. Then we acquired a company called IBM podcast, which has been a podcasting studio. Then we acquired a small publisher called Right Order, which hopefully will become our
00:30:26
Speaker
physical book publishing, physical comics publishing arm and we also started licensing our stories to ecosystem partners for conversion into other formats like a web cities or a movie and that has like started happening as well. Okay, so like till 2020 when it was largely focused on text-based content like was your focus more on acquiring authors or on acquiring readers like how did you
00:30:56
Speaker
balance the pressures and what were the growth hacks that you used to build that? So primary focus was actually not an acquisition at all. Primary focus was on what can I do to make my authors the advocates.
00:31:09
Speaker
And at least one of the key things of making your authors happier is to give them more readers. In fact, probably that is the number one thing. So the only reason why we even focused a little bit on demand side was because that was needed to make my writers feel happy. But from both product perspective and from company perspective, the single biggest focus area was how do I keep my top writers as happy as possible. That is what we largely focused on. And we have always done a lot of experiments on product engineering and everything else that you think of.
00:31:38
Speaker
It's not like growth hacks per se, but it's more like just experimenting and seeing what works, what doesn't. So I think about two years, two and a half years back, we had a grand total of zero people who have been marketing our sales or anything of that sort. How were the readers coming in then?
00:31:58
Speaker
That is the thing like all the product people, all the engineers, even people from finance or customer service, everybody has encouraged to experiment and like some experiments would work. A lot of them will not work and whatever work will try and basically double down and scale that. But there was no marketing, growth, sales, business movement, whatever you can think of. Your thesis basically was that in a UGC platform, the
00:32:24
Speaker
people generating content are the things, like they should be the ones that are your primary market to cater to. That was part of it. But the bigger part was that if I have enough high quality content, and if the product really works, then I can always spend money and acquire customers whenever I want. And any which case you're going at 4x year on year, and 4x year on year growth is pretty okay. So it reminds me of any which case growing well enough. And if I want to accelerate, we can whenever we want by just spending more money. And what was driving this growth?
00:32:54
Speaker
it was like word of mouth or were you because you were not spending to acquire a reader. Just to be clear, it's not that we were not spending money on marketing. It's just that there was no one whose job it was to market or to acquire users. It was more likely that the fitness culture has been that anybody can come and do anything.
00:33:12
Speaker
A PM, for example, could be running an experiment on Facebook. A engineer could be running an experiment on Google. A customer service slash language guy might be running offline meter. All of these will require money to spend and all of these will end up acquiring users. It's just that it was not about acquiring users. It was more about experimenting and seeing what works, what doesn't work. Okay.
00:33:35
Speaker
Okay. And, but like, tell me some of the ways in which that Forex growth was happening. Like, what were the... Just honestly, people look for silver bullets. There was no silver bullet. It was more like people have tried, let's say 500 experiments out of 500, six of them have worked and that's our user scheme. Another 494 did not work and that's fine.
00:33:57
Speaker
But what worked for you? I'm trying to derive those lessons, bullet points. That is the wrong way to look at it in my opinion because again for different companies and different use cases different experiments would work as an even fault for 3P5 do the exact same 500 experiments again.
00:34:13
Speaker
Again, just to be clear, obviously, we are doing 500 new experiments, but the same six will probably not work. That was in a different era of the different kind of product, different kind of market dynamics, and so on and so forth. The single biggest one that worked really well for us was SU, and that has continued to work really, really well. Then the second one that worked really well was basically people sharing stories on Facebook more than any other platform. Sometimes it would be writers sharing their stories that, you know, I have published the story and come and read that.
00:34:41
Speaker
Sometimes it'd be a reader sharing a story that I just read Mary Avantika and this is a great novel and you should definitely go and read that. So that was second. Performance ads on Facebook worked really well. So that was the, like, these would be your top three in that order. Okay. A performance ad for readers or for authors? For readers. For writers, I don't think we have ever spent money on acquisition. Okay. Okay. So some of the readers will also be writers. So when they land on the platform, then they get converted into writers.
00:35:10
Speaker
So the best thing is, at least in Prathipi's context, I think that over a period of time, we have figured that readers automatically become writers over a period of time. Everybody has a story in their head. And if you make the product simple enough and intuitive enough, over a period of time, they will start creating content as well and not just consuming content. How did you make it simple and intuitive for a person to be a content creator?
00:35:35
Speaker
So I am not really a product guy. I just gave a lot of freedom and flexibility to my product managers who did a good job, I think. Okay. Well, is it something unique and different from say the platform, like say Medium or Quora, which I am more exposed to, is particularly different from them? There is no fundamental difference. It would just be that for this particular target segment, for example, what works may not necessarily work for Medium's target segment, for example.
00:36:03
Speaker
Or maybe the personalization might be a little bit better in terms of what kind of users, what kind of language, what kind of interface do you provide versus everybody gets the same interface. So there would be nuances, but fundamentally, I don't think there would be any large difference fundamentally. Okay. So when someone lands into Pratilipi, they only see content in their preferred language. Of course. Not just preferred language, but our best guess on what is the kind of content that we're likely to like.
00:36:33
Speaker
Okay and are people composing stories on mobile or on laptop? Mobile is the largest by a big margin. I think 92% is mobile. Actually 92% is mobile app alone and then the remaining 67% would be desktop plus everything else. Which sounds fairly unique. I think
00:36:56
Speaker
Not really. So this has been true for Wordpad, this is true for China Literature, this is true for most of the platforms which are UGC platforms. Except for Northern America to some extent and Europe to some extent, mobile is the device of choice for people in general in the rest of the world. But this is how long, like average length of content?
00:37:18
Speaker
This has nothing to do with length of content. Fifty Shades of Grey, as a trilogy, the entire trilogy was written on a blackberry. So for us, for example, there's a story called Maryavantika on Tuthiti, which used to be the most read story. I don't know if it still is. That takes 19 hours to read. All of these are published on the right. Wow. Okay. Amazing.
00:37:46
Speaker
And you had tools so that people could save drafts and then come back and edit and review. And people typically release it in serialized, like this Avantika. Sorry, was it serialized or? At that time it did not happen. Miryantika was published, I think maybe five years back. At that time, there was no serialization support on the clicker. But today, if you look at content, like 70, 80% of the content is serialized with rich. Okay. Okay.
00:38:14
Speaker
And what has been your monetization journey? When did you start monetizing? What were the ways in which you tried to monetize?
Monetization Strategies
00:38:24
Speaker
So we just started monetization about five months back, maybe. Actually, different products would be different to refer. So for comics, for example, we started monetization about eight, nine months back, I think.
00:38:38
Speaker
For the literature product, we started monetizing about four or five months back. For IBM, they have always been monetizing, but we started doubling down about four months back. FM still doesn't monetize. So for different products, it would be different. So the way we think about Pratlipi is that think of each vertical as an entirely independent separate company. So each product would have its own independent team, its own independent cost structure, its own independent revenue model, and so on and so forth. So for the literature product, for example,
00:39:08
Speaker
There are four different parts of quantization. One part is essentially IP licensing, which is basically that there's a story that's great. So we acquire the IP and then we kind of convert that into different formats and we make money via that. Second is basically subscription. So there are two types of subscription. One is called the PP premium, which is a platform wide subscription. One is like super fan, which is basically you're subscribing to a particular creator.
00:39:31
Speaker
And the third is basically that if you like something but you don't want to subscribe because you're not sure if it is that good, then you can send the creator's virtual gifts in the form of small stickers that have some monetary value.
00:39:43
Speaker
So that is the third layer of monetization. And this is how nutrition monetizes. Why would someone subscribe to Pratilipi? Isn't it free to read? And it will, as in most of the time, 9% content will always be free. So there are different ways to think about it. So I can tell you what it is right now, but obviously, over a period of time, it will evolve. So a year out, it might be slightly different.
00:40:06
Speaker
So for Pratli, be a super fan, which is basically you are subscribing to a creator. In that case, you get access to some exclusive features. Like, for example, there's a chat room, which is subscribers only. So there's a writer, let's say, Avita Sharma. So if you are her subscriber, only then you can participate in the chat.
00:40:23
Speaker
Similarly, there could be other features. That is one. The second is that writers can put one or two of their series under the subscription program, where the subscribers will get access to that content five days before everybody else gets access to that content. So that is for Superfans. For Clippy Premium, basically, you get access to all of these content-related benefits, and for all writers, but you don't get the benefits of features. So you still can't participate in the chat room.
00:40:51
Speaker
What I understand the content benefit is only about getting access early. If you were not a subscriber, you would still have access. But if you're a subscriber, then you'll get early access. As of today, yes. And again, just to be clear, it can change. It will change over a few of time. But 90% content will always be free. Maybe even more than 99%. OK. OK. And OK. Got it.
00:41:17
Speaker
So you've never done ads, like ads have not been a source of revenue for you? For literature, no.
00:41:24
Speaker
As in there might have been experiments, but not as a, and we will probably launch ads in two years or something, but that is not because we think of it as a source of revenue for us. That's more like there would be creators. So like the top three creators will make money from IP or the layer below that will make money from subscription. The layer below that will make money for micro payments and virtual gifts. But we want to have a, like some way of monetization for the layer below that as well. And ads would be that, but that's just like at least a year and a half, two years out. And it is unlikely that it will be a big part of.
00:41:55
Speaker
Why not? All UGC platforms run on ads. That's fairly counterintuitive. YouTube's biggest inspiration is purely... Now they have a subscription focus, but it used to be purely ad-driven.
00:42:09
Speaker
That is true. I think it's just that ads, if you have too many ads, for example, then they spoil the reading slash viewing slash listening experience. So that's one reason. The second reason is that like today we are living in a world where there are more ways for people to be able to transact online. So I think when YouTube started, for example, back then the ways to transact online were very, very small. In India, even three years back, even if you really wanted to pay online, except for the top 20, 30 million people, there was no way for you.
00:42:36
Speaker
that has started to change, which means that over a period of time, more and more people will have access to tools like UPI, for example, to be able to pay if they want to. So I think direct payment just makes more sense from that perspective. And also, ads only work when you have upwards of a couple of hundred million users. Ads don't work really well for companies which have 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 million users.
00:43:01
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Okay. And what has been your, like, tell me about the similar approach for the podcast and like, you know, what is the strategy in podcast monetization, in comics monetization? What are like the... So for comics, it's fairly simple. It's basically pay for early access or just wait and review for free. So comics are released on a weekly schedule. So each comics will have a chapter coming every week.
00:43:28
Speaker
And if you want to read today's release today, then you have to pay a small amount of money to read that, or you wait for a week and you can read it for free. That is that. And these comics are also like UGC content? As of today, no. So it will be UGC at some point. The thing is that there isn't enough great quality content in comics for Indian languages as of today. So we have to basically invest into creating that content. But like five years out, it should be almost entirely UGC. So you are like...
00:44:03
Speaker
So we have licensed comics from, for example, Diamond Comics, which published Satchar Chaudhary, Pinky, Bill Loo. We have licensed comics from Graphic India. We have licensed comics from Amur Chitra Katha. We have licensed comics from global players like Thappus. So we have licensed comics from larger publishers. We also work with a lot of freelancers and a lot of studios to convert our stories into comics. We are basically financing for that. That is the second layer.
00:44:23
Speaker
You're onboarding authors or are you going to publishers?
00:44:31
Speaker
Okay, okay, okay. And do you also translate like say maybe a comic was in Haiti originally? That depends on what licenses we have, but we will. As in for our own comics, we definitely do. For licensed comics, we do depending on how popular the comics is and what kind of license the publisher is willing to give us. Okay, okay. And for podcasts, what is the monetization?
00:44:57
Speaker
So for IBM, as of today, quantization is almost entirely brand apps, mainly because IBM, unlike Prathipi and Prathipi Literature, is a very high-end premium product, which means that a lot of brands basically want to associate with IBM's podcast. So almost entirety of revenue as of today would be branded podcasts or essentially brand apps. But we will be launching subscription on top of IBM podcast by mid of next year.
00:45:26
Speaker
Okay, so that you can listen to them ad-free, like for an ad-free? No, it's not about ads. It's more like, so for example, the best, so subscription will not be for all podcasts and subscription will not be to IBM. Subscription will be to specific podcasts. So think of, for example, let's say, Passarasa, or think of, let's say, Cyrus says. So there are some people who really, really, really like Cyrus. In that case, basically, you can listen to the main podcast for free. But if you want to have behind the scenes access,
00:45:53
Speaker
If you want to be able to ask a question to Cyrus, or like if you want to be part of a lucky draw where you might become a guest next time and things like that, then you have to subscribe to Cyrus. Okay, like a super fan. Exactly. The main podcast is still free, but there are certain exclusive things which are only available for subscribers. So if let's say 800,000 people listen to Cyrus, maybe only about
00:46:15
Speaker
5,000 actually become subscribers. It's just that once those 5,000 subscribers start going across different podcasts, then it starts picking the larger businesses. Okay. So originally, when you started in 2015, it must have been bootstrapped, right?
Funding Rounds and Growth
00:46:33
Speaker
So when did the first round of funding happen? So we raised like the exact first was 30 lakhs from Times Internet in March 2015.
00:46:43
Speaker
And then the first institutional round was a million dollar led by next time. That T-Labs was like an angel round kind of a... It was more of an accelerator round. So T-Labs, so Times Internet used to, like BCCL has something called Times Internet, which is their digital arm. And then Times Internet used to run an accelerator called T-Labs. So that was round led by T-Labs.
00:47:04
Speaker
And it made sense for them because you are in the content space, they are in the content space. I don't think that's how it works. TLaps, as in times, wanted to become a proper financial investor, as in not just a strategic investor. So they have been investing in companies across formats, like across use cases, even if that has nothing to do with content or whatever. So it was a purely financial investment. Okay, okay, okay. And so this was like an incubator round, then when was the next round?
00:47:32
Speaker
Then we raised a million dollars led by Nexus Venture Partners in February 2016. What kind of pitch did you have at that time for Nexus and what kind of user numbers and all you did you have? I can guess. I think I would have had about maybe couple of hundred thousand monthly active users like 200, 300, 400,000 monthly active users. I don't remember exactly. The pitch was basically what we are
00:47:57
Speaker
talking about right now, like we want to build a storytelling platform across different formats, across different languages, across different geographies. But we are going to be focusing on literature for the first two, three, four years. And if you're able to win that, then we'll start expanding into the other formats and other geographies from there. That was a simple question. In fact, in my save zone, I actually even had slides saying that why you should not invest in the book. Okay, what was that like?
00:48:23
Speaker
I don't remember all of it, but I think it was basically like if you're thinking of a company that will become profitable very quickly, but it is not that company. If you're thinking of a company where we'll focus on how sexy the product looks, but it is not that company. We are going to be focusing on our users and what really works from experiments and not in terms of like what looks sexy or what looks flashy. A bunch of other things. I don't really remember all of this. Okay. Okay. Okay. Then when did you raise the next round after this 1 million?
00:48:49
Speaker
I think we raised a 4.3 million series, I think in about February, March, 2018. This was led by Omidyar Network. Okay. So by this time, nobody was telling you to run ads. Like, you know, that is still something which surprises me that lack of focus on ads, like, you know, it's fairly different. So a lot of people come up with their own different, different advices. People have said that launch ads, people have said that launch subscription, people have said that launch
00:49:20
Speaker
Microsoft actions, people have said a bunch of different things. But at the end of the day- Omidyar did not ask you to run ads or like put any pressure on you to monetize. I think we have been fairly lucky in terms of our investors. I don't think anybody has ever really pressured us that you should be monetizing right now or like you should be generating revenue right now or things like that. I think they have given different, different kinds of advice they would have. I'm sure that everyone would have said at some point, why don't you launch subscription?
00:49:47
Speaker
everyone would have said at some point, why don't you launch ads? But that would have been more like a discussion as against like, okay, this is what you have. I think that was, we have been slightly lucky. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay. So, and then after the 2018 round with Omidyar. Then we raised a 15 million series B. I think it would have been maybe sometime in 2019, mid of 2019, I think.
00:50:15
Speaker
This was led by shimming venture partners. This is a Chinese VC fund. They have done a lot of UGC platform investments in China, basically. So this was our series B. And what were the user numbers by that time when shimming? Again, I would have to guess. I think we would have been about five, six million monthly active users. Might have been about 10, somewhere around, I think something between five and 10.
00:50:41
Speaker
And pre-pandemic like 2020, early 2020, what were the numbers like? Should have been about, I think, 15 million monthly active users, 15, 17, something like that. And today, what are they? For the literature. Now, today we have multiple products, of course. Literature has about 31, 32 million monthly active users. So you doubled during the pandemic? Wow. OK.
00:51:08
Speaker
And the other products like what? So comics is about, I think comics should touch a million next month. Today it should be about 900, 950 KMAU. Audio, like the TPFM should be about 400,000 monthly active users, 350 to 400. IBM, and they use impossible to guess because IBM distributes across different platforms and it's 45 to 12 different numbers and that's hard to understand.
00:51:37
Speaker
So that may be over 33 million MAU, 34 million MAU right now. Okay, amazing. And you also raised like a pretty massive round recently, no? So we closed our series D, a 48 million round a couple of months back. And what was like, you know, this is like a pretty big round. So what was it that excited the investors then, you know, what did they see? I think
00:52:05
Speaker
I think obviously, Kraftone guys would be able to answer this better, but my guess is that they have seen the value of great storytelling across different formats in Korea, which is their home market.
00:52:17
Speaker
And what excited them was that we can probably do the same, but for a much, much larger market. And as in our strategy, even from when we started, at least in the sense of what we have been saying, so obviously, I agree on we are not really doing it because we are focused on our new future. But even from that time, our strategy has been very clear that the same story will be utilized across different formats.
00:52:38
Speaker
And this is something that large players like a neighbor and a cacao are getting towards now. I think they were just excited by the possibility of a company which has been built round up with that particular thesis in mind that you will have multiple storytelling products across different geographies, across different formats, and then you will place the best stories across different formats and geographies again. So I think it was just a belief in that thesis of what we have been trying to do. That should have been the single biggest reason. Okay.
00:53:07
Speaker
And what will you use these funds for? So mostly I think there are three areas where they would be used. One is in terms of strengthening your team. One is in terms of like customer acquisition, content acquisition,
00:53:20
Speaker
IP acquisition. And the third is basically if we opportunistically get any opportunity to acquire a different company, or if we kind of, in fact, we will start expanding into global markets. So basically, expanding into newer areas, either via acquisition or via expansion to a new country. These would be the third big areas. When you expand, will you be targeting the Indian diaspora in other countries? Or will you also like, for example,
00:53:47
Speaker
create content in, let's say, the language of Sri Lanka. So we are very, very clear that Prathipi is going to be a global company if we succeed. So it's entirely possible that we fail, and which is fine. But if we succeed, we are going to be a global company. So strategy might be fine. It's entirely possible that, for example, if we go to US, let's say we start by focusing on Indian diaspora first, because it would be relatively easier to start with that. But over a period of time, we will have content for Prathipi, or at least we'll try to have content forever.
00:54:17
Speaker
Okay. So, like, you know, what is your role as CEO? Like, you know, there are some CEOs who are strong in customer acquisition or growth or marketing, or there are some CEOs who are product first. What kind of a CEO are you? So, mostly, as an I don't know honestly, but mostly I focus on just getting the best people to work at Pathipi.
00:54:45
Speaker
either as colleagues or as investors or as partners and I think that is my number one focus. Number two focus is like when people are working with the how do I kind of build the best culture for them and I focus a lot on how do I make sure that my team is not just happy but also being pushed to grow at a fast pace, to learn at a fast pace. So we put a lot of emphasis on
00:55:07
Speaker
that even if you leave Proclippy, you are as successful as possible. We actually played a good part in your journey, both within Proclippy, but also outside Proclippy. So that second, sorry. You were saying? How do you do this? How do you push people to grow? And how do you ensure that your team is growing? So a lot of things, right? So number one is, for example, we give people insane amount of independence, and we have insane amount of transparency. So a lot of companies, for example, the marketing team doesn't have retention data.
00:55:37
Speaker
like product team doesn't have access to your analytics platform. In Pratipi's case, even if you're an intern who is trying today, let's say graphic design, you'll still have access to literally every single analytics that we have. You can see everything from DAU, MAU, retention, whatever. You can go and talk to anyone from any vertical in terms of what they are doing, what their strategies are, and so on and so forth. Similarly on independence, we don't have independence, we have an insane level of independence. You get to pick what you want to work on.
00:56:05
Speaker
There is no OKRs, there is no goals, there is no targets. We don't come and tell you, for example, that, OK, you have to acquire 5,000 users this month. We tell you, OK, what is it that you want to achieve? That's second. Third is just in terms of providing resources to people who want to do something. And the resources could be whatever. Resources sometimes could be, for example, you want to run experiments. So you need, whatever, let's say, $100,000 to run ads on Facebook. And you have zero experience in the market. You are fine with that.
00:56:30
Speaker
It could be something else. It could be, for example, you want to do a particular course. Let's say you want to do a remote M-Tech, a company will sponsor that. You want to have a particular executive coach or a mentor, a company will sponsor that, or whatever else. If you want to run your own startup, we will try to support that in whatever way we can. In fact, there have already been two startups that is now public knowledge, both of which were born from Hackathons Act, which is internal
00:56:57
Speaker
And in both cases, like these are like the founders are all expertly, but also like the early investors are mostly expertly, as in they work on the ideas while they were at the GP. And that's generally just how you operate. And it's, again, it's not that these are two exceptions. That is just how everything is always operated. But how, how do you control it? Like it just sounds, uh,
00:57:21
Speaker
chaotic. Anybody can come and ask for $100,000 to run Facebook ads. I mean, there must be some gatekeeping, some mechanism of approval. So every strategy and every culture, it's less about being good and bad. It's more about trade-offs. What kind of trade-offs are you willing to make if you want to go on a particular strategy? So we make the trade-off that we are going to bet on people.
00:57:47
Speaker
And we are going to bet on long term, which would mean that in short term, there would be chaos, which would mean that in short term, some people will take advantage of us in short term, it means that there would be some inefficiencies. It's just that that's a trade off that we are willing to live.
00:58:01
Speaker
But there is no approval mechanism at all. It depends on the kind of things, right? So, for example, if you have zero experience in marketing and you want to run marketing campaigns, now, for example, there would typically be a marketing guy who kind of keep a look out, OK, are you not making a very obvious mistake? When there was no marketing guy, for example, I will take a look out, OK, are you not making an obvious mistake?
00:58:24
Speaker
Similarly, for example, let's say you want to go and pursue your Emtech. Your reporting manager has to basically come and say, okay, have you done enough within Prathipi where we understand that Emtech is actually going to be good for you? And again, it's not necessarily about whether it's good for company. But if, for example, you have been essentially slacking off for the last four months here, chances are that you are going to be slacking off Emtech as well. So we are probably just going to let you go, forget about having Emtech or not.
00:58:48
Speaker
So for different contexts, there might be somebody who is helping figure out if this is the right thing to do. But in general, there are no gatekeepers type for majority.
00:58:59
Speaker
So for example, if you want to build your own startup, I will typically talk a lot with you to try and figure out if it is a feasible idea. Does that make sense? You don't have to take my advice, but I'll still kind of talk about it quite a bit. If it sounds feasible, we will not only just let you go, we'll actually help in whatever way we can. But if it doesn't sound feasible, we will try to tell you that you know what, this idea sounds bad and it's probably not going to work because of x, y, z.
00:59:24
Speaker
Okay, okay. You were telling me the list of things you're doing. So one is attracting people. Second is empowering and growing people. Third is basically is general firefighting. So for example, when we did not have a marketing team, I was making sure that everybody was doing marketing experiments, they're not making very big obvious mistakes. Similarly, when we did not have a legal counsel, I was the house buyer. And we did not have a finance guy, I was the in-house CACS, whatever you want to call it.
00:59:51
Speaker
Now, in different verticals, whatever needs to be done, for example, right now, my marketing head is trying out a different idea as a part of Pratlipi, but like a different vertical. Right now, I have started stepping in a little bit into marketing. Basically, whatever needs to be done at that particular point in time. That will change basis day-to-day, week-to-week. That is Pratnith's work.
01:00:12
Speaker
And the fourth one is just being a sounding board for people. If they're not clear, whether it's aligned with the strategy, overall company strategy, whether they have five ideas, but they're not sure which one to prioritize. So basically just discussing with people and figuring out why X makes more sense versus YY makes more sense. So I think these would probably be the four parts of what I am focused on. What is your process for deciding who gets to join Pratilipi?
01:00:39
Speaker
Again, just to be clear, Prathipi is very highly independent, so it might not be my call for 99% people. I only get to make the call if you're reporting to me. Whoever you are reporting to, they get to make the final call on whether they should join or not. It doesn't matter what 20 it says. If you are going to be reporting to me and I am the hiring manager, then generally, I'm looking for people who I believe are going to grow exponentially over the next three, four, five, 10 years. More than anything else, I'm looking for proxies or looking for
01:01:06
Speaker
a leading signal so that I can see that whether or not you are going to learn and grow at a very, very fast pace. I care much less about your previous pedigree, your previous experience or anything else.
01:01:16
Speaker
I like people who are really resourceful because the trip is still an early stage startup and there's a lot of QOs, so people who are resourceful are likely to do better. People who are okay living in a chaotic environment where nobody's hand-holding you and telling you, this is what you should do. You can take ownership on your own. I like people who have high problem-solving ability because, generally, because of that lack of hand-holding, people who are good at problem-solving are the people who enjoy working. Otherwise, you'll just get disturbed very, very quickly.
01:01:46
Speaker
And then it depends on the role. There would be specific other attributes that I'll be looking at, but these would be the broad attributes. So how do you judge these things? So you're saying you want someone who's going to grow exponentially, but how do you judge that? How do you decide he will grow, he will not grow? It's a judgment call, right? So I would be wrong very often, obviously.
01:02:04
Speaker
But basically, it's two things. One is that what have you done in the past? Like, have you learned and grown quickly? Or have you basically, were you gotten as in, did you get lucky to be born in the right place at the right time in the right family, and so on so forth, and then you just kind of cruise along. So somebody who has kind of learned and grown quickly in the past are likely to learn and grow quickly in the future as well. And what kind of like, like, what is your interview like? So you just chat with them and ask them to take
01:02:29
Speaker
What did you do in the past? 80% of the interview would basically be about what you have done in the past, what you want to do in the future. 20% of the time, it would be depending on person to person. It could be, let's say, a puzzle. It could be, for example, a hypothetical scenario that what you do in something like this. It could be more of an engineering question. So that depends on which area you want to dig deeper into. But 80% of the interview is almost always just chatting about what you have done in the past and what you want to do.
01:02:54
Speaker
Okay, sorry, I interrupted you saying two ways in which you judge one is that that's one. And the second is something like a case study where I'll keep on giving you new information, I'll try to see how you are utilizing that new information into your model. So if you're not utilizing that new information into evolving your thinking, chances are that you will not do it in real life.
01:03:17
Speaker
But if you are doing it while we are having the discussion, if you suddenly get to know a new point and now your thinking has changed, chances are that will happen in real life as well. How do you do this? Can you show me an example? Could be a lot of different. Let me give you an easier example. Let's assume that you are a big fan of a particular politician, and that's mine. And then I give you a new piece of information that that particular politician has actually bribed someone.
01:03:39
Speaker
Does that filter into your process or like you don't as an I'm not saying you suddenly start hitting him I'm saying like do you keep that point of information you evolve now? I give you a different point
01:03:49
Speaker
Let's say that that politician actually has raped someone in the past. Does that change your thought process? If I give you a new piece of information, that politician actually came from a really bad background and then they have donated almost all of their network to charity. Does that change your process? This is a weird example. I'll take clean audio about politicians. Yeah, I understand. But the point is basically there is a viewpoint that you hold basis something and I keep on giving you new information. I keep on seeing how that new information changes and involves your thought process.
01:04:21
Speaker
Are you like an information junkie? Do you love to know and learn new current affairs?
01:04:33
Speaker
mostly know a little bit here. So I read a lot. But the purpose of reading for me is not learning. The purpose of reading for me is, well, reading is fun. It obviously, because I read so much, it obviously happens that I know a bunch of things. But that is never the purpose. The purpose is just to have fun. And that means that inadvertently, you end up learning a bunch of stuff and knowing a bunch of things. But that's not why I read.
01:04:56
Speaker
So I like, for example, playing intellectual ping pong with people where we are talking about random hypothetical scenarios, why this company might work, this might not work, why this strategy is better, why that strategy is better. The purpose is not to dissect the strategy. The purpose is to have fun. It just so happens that because you are doing that, you learn a little bit more about strategy as well. And you typically read fiction or non-fiction? Both. And like what language?
01:05:21
Speaker
Now, mostly English because over the last 7-8-10 years, I got used to it. So now, maybe 80% English, 20% Hindi. Is there a difference in quality of content available in English versus _____? For literature, not anymore. I don't think so. Maybe there is still some, but it would be like 19-20, not like 15-25.
01:05:45
Speaker
for non-fiction, I think there is still a huge gap. But again, it's not a function of talent. It's a function of opportunity. It just so happened that there was not that many non-fiction platforms for non-English writers or non-English creators, which meant that the best people either learned English or they stopped creating. Build something like the Clippy for non-fiction creators and the quality will rise automatically.
01:06:07
Speaker
So are you planning to do that to go into non-fiction? Of course. IBM, for example, is almost entirely non-fiction, right? Right. And we would be doing a lot of stuff about non-fiction as well. I don't know how it would look like. Would it be a part of an existing product? Would it be a new product? I don't know. But will we do something? So these are all separate apps, like Pretility.fm is a different app. These are separate products, yes. OK.
01:06:33
Speaker
FM app is currently like you are paying for the content or is it UGC? There's some UGC, there's some UGC, there's some licensed content but a lot of content basically we are as an it's content that we have already acquired but we are paying for production and editing and sound engineering and all of that.
01:06:51
Speaker
and because you have a studio in the form of IBM. No, no, IBM's quality is very, very different. That is not the kind of investment that we would make for something we are primarily doing. For the Clippy FM and the Clippy Comics are going to be UGC platforms at some point in time. It's just that right now we are investing because, well, number one, we can afford to, number two, the market is not ready, which means that either we have to wait for two, three, four years for market to get ready, or we have to invest to get it faster to that point.
01:07:21
Speaker
IBM has a certain reputation where the content that they create has to have a certain level of quality. So IBM's production cost would be 3x, 4x of the PFM's production cost. Right, right, right. Got it. Okay. So you are essentially in the space of the creator economy, so to say, you know, like you are essentially looking to arm the creator. So what is the lay of the land here? You know, what is the other players in this space whom you see as
01:07:50
Speaker
possible future competitors or today's competitors.
01:07:54
Speaker
I don't really think of them as competitors, mainly because the market as of today is still fairly small, including Pratipi. I'm not trying to belittle the competition. The number of players in a creator economy as a whole is still fairly small. Who are the players in the creator economy? It depends on how you define creator economy, obviously. But I think the largest and the most important one is YouTube and Instagram by a big, big, big margin. But outside of YouTube and Instagram, depending on the format, for example, for video, there is
01:08:25
Speaker
There is TVF, there is array, there is, what do you call that? Pocket Aces, there are a bunch of others. For audio, there is Pocket FM, there is Kupu FM, there is Headphone, there are a bunch of others. For literature, there is Mathubharthi, there is Kahaniya, there is Walmiki, there is Story Mirror, there are a bunch of others.
01:08:45
Speaker
For other formats like for creator merchandising, there are a bunch of others. For creator monetization, there is a scroll stack. There should be a bunch of others again. So depending on the context that you're talking about or the use case that you're talking about, in each use case, I think there would be at least five, seven people trying to do something. Okay. Are you also planning to build like a subtract kind of a product for email newsletters or do you think that your audience is not relevant?
01:09:13
Speaker
Actually, it's not about substat, like per se, substat will, okay, it's not about substat, but both of us are doing the same thing, it's just that we are starting from a different point, we are starting from different point. So at the end of the day, what creators want is audience, engagement, and monetization. So we started by saying, okay, let me solve for audience, then I solve for engagement, then I solve for monetization. What substat did was they said, okay, let me solve for monetization, then I'll solve for engagement, then I'll solve for distribution.
01:09:42
Speaker
It's less as an overview of time, you will see sub-stack resembling more and more like the P and P resembling more and more like sub-stack. It's just that we are going from it, going towards the same point in different directions. I think it's unlikely that we'll launch a product like sub-stack, given that we already have distribution. Why would I take a step back? Is it possible? It's possible, but it's unlikely.
01:10:05
Speaker
Okay. And is video on the horizon? Like that's the last frontier for you. Not in the short term probably. So we are only interested in storytelling products. So we are not interested in very short form content for example. Now video, long form video, we'll have to compete against YouTube.
01:10:23
Speaker
That's not a battle that we think we can win, so probably not in the short term. Within video, we are doing a bunch of stuff. For example, we are producing web series, but then we are not distributing them, like Netflix or Hotstar or MX Play are distributing them. We have started experimenting, and we want to really double down on motion comics. If you haven't seen, you should go and check out.
01:10:46
Speaker
Check out more than we trained that we have started that we have published the first season. I think we just finished three days back as a motion comics reason YouTube. It has had more than we trained with it. Let me move the train. More than the train. In English, it will be called train of the day. So we so motion comics, for example, maybe we might actually launch our own distribution product. But video as a whole distribution, I think we don't want to compete against YouTube.
01:11:17
Speaker
You know, I'm really fascinated with how you hold the ship together with such a laissez faire management style. How big is your team now? I think about 160 people, roughly. And do you think this laissez faire style can continue when you are, say, 500 people?
01:11:39
Speaker
I don't know.
Company Culture and Leadership Evolution
01:11:40
Speaker
I think when we were 20, I thought that maybe at 50, it will start breaking down. When we got to 50, we thought at 100, it will start breaking down. So we don't... Why hasn't it broken down so far? What makes this work? I've never heard of any other company which has such a laissez-faire kind of a culture and organization approach to it.
01:12:05
Speaker
I think it's mostly that early on, it was still me driving these values or this kind of company culture. Over a period of time, there are more and more leaders within Patlipi that kind of also percolate the same thing. When it was just me and I was managing this for five people, it was easy, but at 25, it would happen hard.
01:12:22
Speaker
But now let's say when we are at 170, it's not one person driving that culture. It's more like 20-25 people who have worked in Patripe for long enough who genuinely believe in this way of working. And they have been basically the beacon of light for how we want to proceed. So that makes things a lot easier. I think if it was just me driving this, that would have broken like four years back, five years back. Don't you worry about
01:12:49
Speaker
like people making wrong hires or you know i mean i i know that at 160 size also a lot of founders would still personally interview every person getting hired just to ensure culture fitment and uh you know but in your case you've left it to the respective leaders to decide you know i worry a lot but that is a trade-off that you have to make i think a bigger problem would be if we are doing a little bit of this a little bit of that and both of like
01:13:17
Speaker
Either of the two can work where founders are interviewing everyone or at least every major candidate and like a very high independence culture like Prathipi either can work. I think the problem is when people don't know which culture they want to build and they try to do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Okay. Okay. You come across as someone with a lot of
01:13:40
Speaker
a belief in ideological purity. There is a certain ideology which you want to stay pure towards and you don't want to dilute it. That is true. I am idealistic, but I'm also very practical in the sense that, for example, I would never say that Pratipi's culture is going to be like this forever because I don't know. Maybe at certain size it becomes impossible and we have to change this or change that. Culture is evolving just like values are evolving.
01:14:06
Speaker
It's not that nothing about the Philippines culture has changed. It's just that the core has remained same. On the edges, a lot of things have changed and evolved over a period of time. The same is true about our strategy. The core of the strategy has remained same even before I got my co-founders. But on the edges, of course, a lot of different things have changed. That is also part of your ideology. I don't know if it's one of your ideologies. Which is fair. I think I'm generally fairly consistent. But this is...
01:14:36
Speaker
I mean, I've seen founders with decades of experience who don't have this kind of ideological purity. What made it happen?
Founder's Ideological Consistency
01:14:47
Speaker
Honestly, I think back in 2011 or so, I decided that I want to be conscious about what kind of person I want to be. And I think because I decided to be conscious about what kind of person I want to be, over a period of time, I also became conscious about what kind of company I want to keep, what kind of company I want to build, what kind of culture I want to have, and so on and so forth. I think I just have been a little bit more conscious about what is okay with me and what is not.
01:15:15
Speaker
Because I, as in, again, like 10 years back, I decided to keep what kind of person I want to be. So like everything else kind of started something right. What was the trigger for you to think about this? Like what kind of person do I want to be? I don't remember.
01:15:31
Speaker
Must have been a fight or something with someone where I felt like I was being an asshole and I thought, okay, I don't want to be an asshole. Instead of me being random qualities, let me kind of consciously decide what kind of qualities I want to have and what kind of qualities I want to unlearn.
Episode Sponsor Introduction
01:15:48
Speaker
This episode of Founder Thesis Podcast is brought to you by Long Haul Ventures. Long Haul Ventures is the long haul partner for founders and startups that are building for the long haul. More about them is at www.longhaulventures.com