The Exchanges

Q And can you tell the various milestones in the journey? Like, you know, if you can share what was the revenue back in And what's the revenue today?

A It's, it's, yeah, I don't even think it's admissible, but, um, so when we started, we were in events business. Sponsorship was the only way for us to generate any form of cash. So I think the first year we did maybe 40,000 in revenue. The second year we moved to six lakhs. The third year was 40 lakhs. The year after that was one and a half, then five and a half, and then we ended the last year at about 10 and a half. So, um, it's been interesting because, you know, like our model has changed from being an organization that relied only on ticket sales as revenue to then becoming something that was supported through branded content and ads to now actually moving away from that model and relying completely on B to C revenue, uh, which is the user directly paying for the courses on the app. So it's been sort of like a transition after every couple of years.

AI assessment note: “first year we did maybe 40,000 in revenue... ended the last year at about 10”

Q And, uh, how, how do you track the metric, right? That you have impacted our lives. Is it the feedback which you receive or any other mentor?

A So for talks, it's mostly through the feedback that we receive from users and the comments that we get, um, you know, and mostly stories revolve around people who've actually either been able to grant the government exam or dropped out of, uh, you know, their current job, started their own business. Change the stream in college. Left an abusive relationship. Those are the kinds of stories that we keep getting in. Um, and it's mostly through comments, or we have something called a community tab on YouTube where we regularly interact with our, um, you know, users or subscribers. And for skills, it's mostly tracked through completion rates. Uh, so for people who actually completed the course, we track how it sort of changed their life. Were they able to get a job after that or not? We are not doing the job matching piece right now, but we want to take that up in the future ourselves. But right now we sort of track like, for example, use cases are very different for people when they're coming in to learn English. It could be as simple as a mother wanting to learn English to talk to her child who lives in the city. And that has a very different kind of an impact and extremely qualitative and emotional, but it could be someone who's in a first job trying to get a promotion and for the promotion requires spoken English. Um, and that's where we're able to see, you know, tangible econom…

AI assessment note: “So for talks, it's mostly through the feedback that we receive from users”

Q I think, ah, you know, Ankur Waripu mentions about Josh, and you, and Shobis a lot about, honestly. So how has your relationship with you been, right? Has he been an investor or a mentor?

A Yeah, so he, so he started off with actually being a speaker. So Ankur was a speaker at Josh Talks Gurgaon in 2015, and, um, and at that point of time he was in Groupon, and he used to run, like, he was active on Quora. Um, not sure if you remember, but he was one of the few people who had actually built this base on Kora, and he used to give out his email ID over there, and then I just reached out to him saying you should come and give a talk, and that's how we met. Um, and after the event got over, he actually wrote in saying that I have been a part of so many events, and I've spoken at, you know, so many festivals, college events, etc., but I have never seen something which was, Co-ordinated so smoothly end to end that it was, you know, an experience for a speaker also to be a part of that and to, uh, witness that. Um, and that's how we started talking and then, you know, we met him at nearby. He was subleaving his office space in nearby. We ended up working there for one and a half years after Innovate. Um, and that's actually where we sort of like, you know, um, used to see him. He was quite a role model for us, right? Like he would be handling such a large team. He would just be walking down in the lunch hall. We would be able to catch up with him for 5:10 minutes, um, and continue to learn from him. And then eventually he did become a shareholder in Josh.

AI assessment note: “He was quite a role model for us... eventually he did become a shareholder”

Q the, the content strategy grew, right? Sharing when you were sharing like once a week, like if somebody is inspired, a little girl is inspired in college by Sobriya and wants to start her own YouTube channel today, what would you advise her, you know, how you have the kind of experience you have, what kind of content and the teams that you have built over the last five years?

A So it's evolved a lot. Um, I think what's remained the same is consistency. Earlier we would probably do one talk a week or a one talk every two weeks, but everybody would know that Monday is the talk release date and everybody would work towards that date. Uh, where we are today, we do close to three talks a week for Hindi and English and two talks a week for six other languages. Uh, so cumulatively it's a lot of content that we're pushing out. But for YouTube, I think, uh, a couple of things work for us. One is that, uh, consistency. So the user knew exactly when the talk is going to get released and they were able to keep up with it. They were excited about when the next release would be. The second was authenticity, which is, you know, within the content, like I said, it was unfiltered, uh, completely pure storytelling. You were not putting on a face. You were not trying to show something about yourself that you're not. And audiences really love that, especially in the demographic that we cater to. And, um, so obviously those, those are the two, uh, key points. And, um, you know, the third one would probably be, um, like a lot of effort goes into packaging. So a lot of good videos actually get unnoticed because they don't have the right kind of thumbnails or titles supporting them. And that's something that we also started to work on quite late, but I think now with the gro…

AI assessment note: “One is that, uh, consistency... The second was authenticity... third one would probably be... packaging”

Q Uh, which you have built, like some of the best people in content working with you. How did you get the likes of these people, like Manish, to, to work with you?

A Yeah, I think it's, it's the same way that we convinced speakers, right? It was always about who are we working for? Um, and everybody knows that, right? Like if you're not mission oriented, the same people who work at Josh have the opportunity to work with the largest education companies right now in India who are producing similar content. And for them to give that decision up and come and join us, it's purely driven from the impact that they see getting created in the end user's life when somebody is learning with us or somebody is watching us as opposed to another platform. And I think that's always been the driving force. The second is that we have a culture of complete ownership. We are, you know, stubborn, like the average age of the organization is 25, so you can imagine like 125 year olds working towards a mission like ours. So, what we really try and create is that There's a lot of, um, you know, ownership given to everybody. Um, it's not about just doing your current job or role that's assigned to you. Everybody picks up one side project that they work on. And when they're able to see that through, I think that fulfills them a lot. So they, you know, choose to stay with us for long periods of time, um, and continue to work.

AI assessment note: “it's purely driven from the impact that they see getting created in the end user's life”

Q So, so what, what are your other moments of self-doubt have been during the Jewish journey?

A So, um, I mean, it's, we've, we've transitioned and moved a lot, right? Like from moving from an events business to a video business. Video also, vernacular video did not exist in 2017. When we were there, there was only maybe two or three other, uh, players in the south, mostly in the entertainment category. You didn't know of any channels that actually existed in Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali. Uh, so that was obviously there, that are we too new, um, for the market? Are people even going to, you know, consume this content online? Then a lot of self-doubt was brought upon, you know, with people saying that motivation will saturate, and you know, nobody will want to view this content over years. But what we've seen is, like, a video actually performs better in year two and year three. So it's almost like our views grow exponentially in year two and year three, as opposed to, you know, everybody consuming it at this point of time. So, uh, there are a lot of triggers, but, uh, it's been, it's been a long journey with ups and downs, but I think we've been able to overcome a lot of that questioning now.

AI assessment note: “so that was obviously there, that are we too new, um, for the market?”

Q And what are your current self-doubts, right? Current self-doubts I think would be on scale. Can you build it a hundred crores business?

A Yeah, I think, I think that's what, and a lot of the ecosystem also triggers your self-doubt from time to time, right? So I think now that we're in the space where we're building, um, you know, an edtech business, scales is exactly that. Uh, there is an opportunity to scale fast, grow, raise more money. Um, you know, and, and I think that's where, again, the self-doubt comes that are you the most, uh, capable person being somebody who's from a non-technical background to actually run and scale this business. Um, and, and those are kind of sort of like the questions that we have to overcome. Or is this the right time to raise another round of funding? Um, you know, have you been able to actually grow from the funds that we raised previously? But

AI assessment note: “are you the most, uh, capable person being somebody who's from a non-technical background”