Kahaniya goals to develop into an interface between writing and storytelling expertise and producers within the content material house
Moreover the script of a Telugu language movie Kalki, which was found on the platform, founder Pallav Bajjuri says different offers are within the pipeline
Bootstrapped since 2016, Kahaniya recorded INR eight Lakh earnings in FY 2020 and is a premium content material to go along with IP creation for income
Serial entrepreneur Pallav Bajjuri has been experimenting with the content material house for some time now. After shutting down a social journalism platform Saddahaq in 2016, Bajjuri began one other experiment with a brand new content material platform — Kahaniya. Till 2019, Kahaniya hardly had a everlasting group besides Bajjuri, who saved exploring the gaps within the content material house.
“If you look at the market, a lot of old school publishers have shut shop, because it is a function of market and talent. There was a huge gap in the vernacular content space, where talent and opportunity were finding it really difficult to find each other. And that’s what we are trying to solve with Kahaniya — connecting talent with opportunities,” the entrepreneur stated.
Although fairly much like the likes of Wattpad and Pratilipi when it comes to platform choices, the corporate differentiates itself based mostly on the monetising potential. Via Kahaniya, at the very least two writers have already bagged e book publishing offers. Furthermore, the script for the 2019 Telugu movie Kalki was found on Kahaniya, and one other story is now being made right into a film.
“We have people like producers of Bahubali writing on Kahaniya officially, then we have the maker of Manikarnika and all of these people are looking at Kahaniya for new content now. We are even working with OTT platforms like Zee5, SonyLIV to bag more opportunities for the platform writers,” stated Bajjuri.
Based by Devendar Gona, Jeswanth Padooru, and Bajjuri in 2016, Kahaniya is now seeking to elevate its seed spherical of funding within the subsequent few months. Bootstrapped until now, Kahaniya reported INR eight Lakh in income in FY2020. Additional, the vast majority of customers on Kahaniya (about 60%) are Hindi language customers, 30% Telugu and about 10% English.
The corporate is working on a B2B strategy to function a bridge between expertise and producers. Bajjuri famous that the problem within the content material house shouldn’t be the dearth of platforms as writers can right now join with readers on a myriad of digital platforms together with Fb, Instagram, Twitter, Pratilipi, Medium and others. Nevertheless, the monetisation of content material remains to be a largely unsolved puzzle.
Even digital media corporations should rely on occasions and sponsored content material to generate income. So content material, itself doesn’t pay, there are allied actions round content material that typically pays for content material. Bajjuri famous that Saddahaq was shut down primarily due to the dearth of a monetisation mannequin and so, with Kahaniya, he had the monetisation set in place proper from the start. The Hyderabad-based firm is concentrated on nurturing its partnerships with entities like e book publishers, filmmakers and OTT platforms and many others, to create alternatives for its writers.
Monetising Content material
On Kahaniya, e book publishing and movie diversifications are clearly the main supply of incomes for writers however such offers should not so frequent but.
Along with these alternatives, writers on Kahaniya can even write premium content material and be paid by the platform’s reader base. Nevertheless, not each author can submit paid content material on Kahaniya. The platform has arrange an editorial board to vet the premium content material. This editorial board evaluations the standard of the authors’ story to make sure that the standard of premium content material shouldn’t be compromised.
“We are in a space where people are just getting used to subscriptions and if we give them low quality content which is priced high — it is going to discourage the readers really quickly. So we have this vetting process, we have an editorial team which takes a call on whether a writer’s work is eligible to be published as paid content or not,” added Bajjuri.
The editorial board is claimed to incorporate achieved writers who’ve been writing for movies, TV collection, or are very long time novelists, amongst others. These editorial board members work on an advisory foundation with the platform and are compensated when it comes to platform credit and incentives.
Authorized writers on Kahaniya can worth the story on a per story foundation or an entire e book worth strategy. The corporate claims to have 100Ok month-to-month energetic customers, out of which 5K-7K find yourself paying for premium content material. The platform at present has about 175 writers who’re eligible to put in writing paid content material.
Whereas the competing platform Pratilipi has additionally proposed monetisation of content material by paid tales and publishing offers. They estimate to achieve that stage within the subsequent 5-10 years. One other competitor within the content material house, YourQuote has additionally proposed a monetisation possibility for its four Mn robust person base, whereby any person can create paid content material and earn royalty on every sale. YourQuote additionally helps the writers to self-publish their quotes e book however being a brief type content material platform, film offers and many others should not part of their present monetisation plan.
Fixing The Rooster And Egg Downside In Content material
For any user-generated content material platform, the preliminary problem is to unravel the chicken-egg downside the place to draw a large reader base, the platform must have good writers. Equally, to onboard good writers, the platform must have an ample reader base. Responding to this, Bajjuri stated that within the case of Kahaniya it was executed by a suggestions loop.
“Courtesy of having founded Saddahaq in the past, a lot of my friends are also journalists. So, when we initially launched Kahaniya, there were a couple of stories written about us in the regional media. This attracted the attention of many new writers, including the young chap who wrote Kalki,” stated the founder.
After Kalki went viral on Kahaniya, increasingly more folks began discovering the platform and utilizing it. Kahaniya claims to have helped three writers to earn over INR 50Ok immediately on the platform by paid tales and one other 300 writers have remodeled INR 5000 by it. This financial success of writers became many extra referrals and phrase of mouth.
When Kalki hit the silver display screen, there was an unique slide within the film, mentioning that this story was found on Kahaniya platform. Bajjuri stated that when these kinds of issues occur, everybody within the movie fraternity begins exploring the platform, ultimately enhancing its general high quality.
At this time, Kahaniya’s Telugu web page options greatest famend writers of the previous 4 to 5 generations in Telugu and Hindi. A author who’s already printed and is pretty well-liked, they received’t write on a platform which doesn’t pay for the content material. “But that’s not the case with Kahaniya, the platform allows the writers to continue monetise their content along with extending their audience and reach to a new reader base — hence attracting more and more established writers and thereby a larger readership.”
The corporate claims to have discovered its product market match, income technique and scaling mannequin prior to now few years and is now centered on increasing its attain into different regional languages.
“We are currently operating in Telugu and Hindi mostly, and English as a natural extension of it. But in the next six months, we will be targeting the South Indian market heavily to capture Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam writers,” stated Bajjuri.
