Opinion
Moving Josh Talks from English to Hindi was the company's smartest decision
“And I think that was like the smartest and the biggest decision that we made, which was to move completely into Hindi from an English or an English platform. And then soon after Hindi started picking up online on YouTube, we decided to launch in seven other re…”
Insight
Everyday stories outperform celebrity talks on the Josh Talks platform
“Celebrity talks don't do really well as compared to you know, Anam Admi's talk. Because that's basically what we're known for right now. It's almost like your, you know, shopkeeper, or Kirana store owner, this is his story.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hindi audiences seek government jobs, while Marathi audiences prefer business content
“For example, like with Hindi, a huge part of our audience wants, aspires to be a government servant. So we have a huge category in government jobs. As opposed to Marathi where, you know most of our users are interested in business. So there are a lot of storie…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Vernacular Indian video barely existed in 2017 outside South entertainment channels
“Video also, vernacular video did not exist in 2017. When we were there was only maybe two or three other players in the south, mostly in the entertainment category. You didn't know of any channels that actually existed in Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali.”
Insight
Josh Talks videos see exponential view growth in years two and three
“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.”
Disclosure
Josh Skills refuses to accept standard 2% edtech course completion rates
“We don't want to be in the space where two to three percent of our users are actually completing that course because we didn't start this for people to not spend time on it. We started it for them to be able to get a job after.”
Disclosure
Josh Talks requires every employee to take on an internal side project
“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 pe…”
Insight
Online course completion relies on community and peer interaction over curriculum
“For people to complete a course online, it has to be much more than what's being taught. It's about who's teaching, who are you learning with? How are you interacting? What are the things that you do besides learning? And all of that kind of motivates you to s…”
Assertion Partly supported
Josh Talks scaled annual revenue from 40,000 INR to 10.5 crore INR
“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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Josh Skills generates 20 lakhs monthly and 2.5 crores annually
“So skills is fairly new, but it's about 20 lakhs a month. So you can take about two and a half crores from last year's revenue was driven by skills.”
Disclosure
Josh Talks raised a 1.5 crore angel round from notable tech founders
“We didn't raise any money up until the second or third year of operations, where we did a small angel round for one and a half crores, where we had people like Ritesh, we had Girish Matraputam from Freshworks, and a couple of other angels, Rohit and Nana in We…”
Assertion Partly supported
Josh Talks grew monthly views from 500K to 75M on 1.5Cr capital
“And so with one and a half crores of capital is what we built you know, took Joe stocks from one language into seven other languages and built our viewership, I think, from, It was close to like 500,000 at that point of time to now, which is seventy five milli…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Josh Talks faced a 12 lakh venue bill with only 80,000 INR
“We were literally four days away from the event. We had you know, 12 lakhs to pay to the stadium, and we had, I think, 80,000 in our account.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Josh Talks targets reaching two million paid app users within three years
“So you know, in terms of impact, our goal is to get to about two million paid users in the next three years. And that's sort of the target that we are chasing.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Josh Talks has 175,000 paid users on its app
“Currently we are at one lakh 75,000 paid users on the app.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Josh Talks targets ₹33 crore revenue next year and ₹100 crore in three
“In terms of revenue from a three year perspective, we look at it at about a hundred crores, but from next financial year, it's about 33. That's where we sort of see ourselves headed.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Josh Talks co-founder lived with Swiggy delivery workers for product research
“When all of us are like sort of living here in Gurgaon, et cetera, in our apartments, he chooses to live where most of the swiggy delivery bhaiya stay in Sikandarpur. Because he just wants to be able to track their behavior day in and day out, actually work wi…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Josh Skills users average 42 minutes daily on peer-to-peer speaking practice
“An average person spends close to 42 minutes just speaking on the app per day.”
Supriya Paul