Inshorts to bring the first non-intrusive ad format in well-curated space

Soumya Gupta in conversation with Deepit Purkayastha, Co-founder Inshorts

The news app which offers shorts and crisp 60 words world news has recently launched a funny ad –commercial. Inshorts has grown tremendously with over 4-5 million downloads in 1.5 years and has received the best rating of 4.6 among all the news apps on the Google Play Store. With its new tagline, ‘Stay Informed’ or ‘Short mein jaano’, the news app is looking towards expanding its offering in terms of opinions, analysis, lifestyle, personal finance and career.

At first this may sound something like a very common storyline, three friends who dropped out from IIT and made it big. It is very easy to count the milestones but what we always tend to miss out, is to count the speed-breakers in their journey.

Azhar Iqubal, along with his classmate Anunay Pandey from IIT Delhi and Deepit Purkayastha from IIT Kharagpur, were curious science fellows. They wondered why is it that the elderly are so drawn to the newspaper and the youth so driven away from it?

In the times of social media, the way news could be consumed had also transformed. Bang on! There, they created it. A Facebook page called ‘News in Shorts’.

SG: How did you think about launching a Facebook page?

DP: “It was something like a pilot project, to test the viability, the potentiality of the startup. We wished to know what will work for the audience and what will not.

And it really worked, we created short summaries of news items for those who really wanted to read but could not comprehend or struggled to find the time to read the whole piece. Our summaries contained links of the original web news items. It generated interest in the readers and months later we were admitted to the Times Internet-backed T Labs startup accelerator.

SG: That’s great! But how did you take it forward from there?

DP: Today the app, delivers 60-word summaries of the day’s news to about 3 million subscribers day in day out. Soon, we saw that Inshorts has a tremendous value in the market as no other mobile app is able to deliver the kind of quality and curated content. Our subscribers tripled from December 2014, from 1 million to 3 million in February 2016.

SG: It is surprising, that despite you all not being a fan of news, chose to do a startup like InShorts.

DP: “It is not like we were not interested in news, it is just that we were not interested in all kinds of news content. We felt as the online space is cluttered and distracting, the activity of reading news needs to be turned into a personalized activity. Therefore, we are trying to develop a customized content engine with Inshorts. Simply because, whatever we consume should make sense to us and be of some relevance.

SG: Please share your investment journey, how tough is it to crack a deal?

DP: “In 2015, Inshorts raised a total of $24 million in two funding rounds, both led by Tiger Global. Later, Flipkart co-founders Sachin and Binny Bansal also found it to be the right venture to invest. Although, we haven’t begun monetizing yet but we are in the process to design a revenue model. Thinking in terms of advertising also, we want to go ahead with non-intrusive advertising that doesn’t disturb a reader. Maybe, we will also be able to use some kind of sponsored content.”

SG: Recently, Inshorts also featured as one of the most promising news app on Google Play. How does it feel?

DP: “I am happy that In Shorts struck a chord with the audience and could cater to the consumer needs. We have designed it a way, that it is simple, speedy and accurate. It also worked because the news delivery on the go model synched universally. Earlier, there existed a huge untapped market which the online portals were just not able to capture.

I believe that the consumer these days wants to interact and does not want to be fed news passively. The race to provide news coherently is still on and we want to expand the scope of news content, the languages we deliver in and the sector oriented reader base.”

SG: As the chief strategy officer of In Shorts, what is your reading about the mindset of the audience?

DP: “I have observed that for a millennial audience, what’s trending on Twitter is just as relevant as other news. Our suggestions should therefore not be restrictive but enriching. We are trying to move beyond mere aggregation or distribution, trying to create a one-stop news point. Especially, when news is a commodity which is relevant to everyone who is living, all age-groups and professionals or the non-working.”

SG: Can you discuss your future plans that you have on mind?

DP: “Yes, certainly. With fresh investment coming in this year, we plan to launch into the US market the next. It will be a sector- oriented launch, focusing on product, technology and sports. Soon, we also plan to deliver local news closer home, in the South-Asian cities. And as far as the next step for India is concerned, In Short is going to go vernacular with news delivered in Hindi, Malyalam, Kannada, Tamil and Bengali within a few months.

Inshorts was earlier called as News in Short, but the company wanted itself to be placed differently from other news providers. Therefore, eight to nine months back they rebranded the name to Inshorts.

Inshorts has partnered with several content publishers such as Sportskeeda, Catch News, MotorScribes, Indian Express Group, India Today Group, The Guardian, Outlook, Reuters, PTI, ANI, The Next Web, Trak.in, Bloomberg, Inc42, The News Minute, TechCrunch, Engadget, Social Cops, 91mobiles, The Better India, ScoopWhoop, Finimize, Milaap, SME Times, VakilSearch, Factly, India Infoline, North-east today, Autoblog, CillyPoint and Product Hunt.