Founded in December 2013 by Anirudh Pandita and Ashwin Suresh,
Pocket Aces is a digital entertainment company for the smartphone generation. Through its brands,
Dice Media and
FilterCopy, the startup has created and distributed some of the best performing, original digital content in India. These content pieces have not only garnered a high number of views, but have also displayed excellent audience retention and incredible engagement.
Since its inception, the company has released 100+ videos, published 500+ articles, and generated more than 300% monthly subscription growth through various media assets. Its top 5 videos have garnered over 5 million views each and the firm has created some of the biggest viral video hits in India in the past 6 months. It also pushed content innovation boundaries by creating India's first mockumentary web series, called "Not Fit". Just four months after its official launch, its sharable content platform, FilterCopy, is doing over 1.3 million pageviews a month (>1.1 million uniques), with top articles having read times of 4-5 minutes each!
FilterCopy: FilterCopy is the sharable content platform of Pocket Aces. A general interest content brand, FilterCopy publishes a variety of formats including short videos (2-5 minutes), lists, articles, GIFs, and much more. Feedback from the audience is closely monitored and videos are improved based on these feedback. Some of the top videos created by the company are:
1. “Confusing Things Girlfriends Say” – Release: 27-Jan-2016; Reach: 30 million; Views: 9.5 million; Shares: 142,000; Comments: 106,000
2. “Every Indian Patient” – Release: 1-Jun-2016; Reach: 18 million; Views: 6.6 million; Shares: 130,000; Comments: 37,000
3. “Annoying Things Boyfriends Do” – Release: 3-Mar-2016; Reach: 18 million; Views: 6.0 million; Shares: 75,000; Comments: 41,000
4. “Every Shah Rukh Fan”: Partnered with Shah Rukh Khan on this video, which Shah Rukh Khan shared himself! Release: 11-Apr-2016; Reach: 8 million; Views: 2.2 million; Shares: 25,000; Comments: 15,000
Dice Media: Dice Media is the premium content video division of Pocket Aces. The primary focus here is to create highly serialized fiction entertainment. All videos created are developed and produced end to end in house. Typical series have about 5-10 episodes and are 15-30 minutes each in duration. Dice Media created India's first mockumentary web series, “Not Fit”, which was released in late 2015. The series got a warm response and has great engagement!
Gobble: This is the latest, the company is also planning to start a new food brand call Gobble.
Sujata Sangwan Interacts With Ashwin Suresh and Anirudh Pandita, Co-founders of PocketAces And Spoke To Them
About Founding Team and Pocket AcesAshwin Suresh and Anirudh Pandita first met over a decade ago when they were roommates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where they both completed their undergrad education in Electrical Engineering. Starting up was evidently in their DNA, and the duo started multiple clubs together, right from a cricket team to an investment banking club during their stint at UIUC. By the end of 2013, the time was right. Ashwin was working as the Creative Head at Junglee Pictures, Times Group’s film studio, and Anirudh had moved back to India after completing his MBA at Wharton, and working with a hedge fund in the US.
The duo turned their attention to an industry they both found interesting – media and entertainment. What followed was six to nine months of interacting with people in the industry right from studio executives to A-list actors. Pocket Aces was founded in December 2013 and the digital pivot was made in December 2014. The very first video the company released (in September 2015) was a massive hit. The video, called “Ban Ban”, was released via Facebook Native Video and received ~7.5 million organic views and was shared over 180,000 times, making it one of India’s biggest organic viral hits of the year.
Today, Pocket Aces is a digital entertainment company for the smartphone generation. Through our brands, Dice Media and FilterCopy, we have created and distributed some of the best performing, original digital content in India. These content pieces have not only garnered a high number of views, but have also displayed excellent audience retention and incredible engagement.
With the rise of social as the primary form of content discovery and the rise of mobile as the primary form of content consumption, these entrepreneurs believe that the media company of the future needs to have a differentiated content instinct, strong technology DNA, and a solid social distribution understanding.
Pocket Aces currently operates two brands: FilterCopy and Dice Media. The company will launch its third brand, a food content destination, called Gobble in July 2016.
How was the idea generated to start this venture?The key focus when starting this venture was to empower Indian writers! We felt that the content that is coming out via our films and on TV, didn’t reflect the writing prowess that India has. There is a lot of writing talent here but a few brands that empower this talent.
The other key moment was when sat back and thought about the change in consumer behavior when it comes to content consumption and content discovery. We observed that people were discovering content via social and consuming it via their mobiles. On the short-form, people snacked on content (video, articles etc.) through the day and on long-form, people binge watched content on late evenings or weekends.
Lastly, we felt that there was a massive content gap, especially when it came to serving the urban youth. This particular audience, on the back of consuming western content, was used to watching highly serialized, seasonal content and the content on television was not serving their needs. It was time for content innovation!
These factors along with a desire to go direct to the audience influenced our decision to embrace digital
How is Pocket Aces different from existing startups in the same space?1. Strong focus on video, especially short form video
2. Data-driven decision making and content creation. Our team learns from tools/metrics like audience retention curves, like/dislike ratios, audience comments, engagement rates etc.
3. We have experimented a lot to understand what really works in original, short form content.
4. Ability to create digitally-native, mixed-media content e.g. a list with a video, a gif, an image comparison
5. Focus on owned technology, which has been designed for scale (content management system, data analytics, advertiser and campaign analytics)
6. Best in class team, with a good mix of professionals from media & entertainment, finance, and technology backgrounds. We have alums from companies and universities like: Goldman Sachs, Citi, Times Group – Junglee Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, Phantom, P&G, Princeton, The Wharton School – University of Pennsylvania, IIT, IIM-A, NYU-Tisch, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jamia Milia, Symbioisis
7. We are creating content at a predictable/steady rate, with a much leaner team than most of our competitors.
Funding StatusWe raised our angel round from Singapore based Surya Ventures the family office of Mohan Mulani, the entrepreneur who scaled the Harry's restaurant & hotel group in Singapore.
Monetization ModelWe have already activated or will activate the following monetization streams:
1. Native Advertising
2. Content Syndication
3. Branded Content
4. White Label Solutions
5. Referral Revenue
6. Subscription Revenue
7. Ancillary Revenue (For example: merchandise revenue)
Tell us about your major viral videos and success stories?Our biggest USP is engagement. Our videos have been shared much more widely than most other videos coming out of India. Some of these have also done very well in other countries like Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, US, NZ, Denmark, Philippines, UK, Sri Lanka, Netherlands, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Canada. The audience in these countries is not only Indian diaspora but from a variety of different background. Indian content can travel abroad and this is the proof. Lastly, we have been creating videos with high virality, engagement, and views on a repeated basis now!
These videos are organically shared and liked by the audiences. That is a massive difference compared to some of our competitors!
Future PlansOver the next year, we will scale our video output and article output from FilterCopy. We hope to take the site from about 1.3 million page views to 5 million by year end.
1. We have 6 web series set up for this year and we hope to do 1 tentpole release per quarter
2. We will build out our food content destination called Gobble.
3. Build out and bolster various technology tools, which we’ve developed during the last 6-9 months
4. Most importantly, we’d like to build Pocket Aces into a well known new media company, which will attract the best young content creators and media business talent. We hope to expand our team and add talented people to various divisions of our company in content, technology, marketing, and business development.
5. Mention any marketing activities you have taken for your company/videos?
On the short-form side, we don’t do a ton of marketing and most of our traffic is organic. Our audiences act as our distributors and help spread our content.
On the long-form side, we anticipate doing much more omni-channel marketing to accompany a big distribution push coming via our organic filtercopy channel.
What were the challenges faced?Not sure what challenges are being referred to here but we feel that the biggest challenge to building and scaling a startup here in India is to find the right talent.
How do you think this market is poised to grow and what are the new opportunities for your venture?Over the next few years the following trends will play out and each will create problems and opportunities:
1. The convergence of social, mobile, and video
2. In India particularly, smartphone proliferation will increase; access to broadband speeds will improve
3. Traditional cable/satellite channels that serve niches will struggle
End of appointment viewing
4. Vast increase in the consumption of short-form content
5. Acceleration in consumption of internet-specific format (videos, gifs, listicles, photo collages)
6. Massive decrease in the cost of video capture and broadcasting
7. Social referral rates overtaking search referral rates
8. Ability to build a direct relationship with the audience and construct communities
All these changes create the need for a new media company that sits at the intersection of content and data. This media company will change the way content is created, tested, and distributed. We’re just at the beginning of this rapid change and huge value remains to be created.
