Entertainment has always been an important aspect in a human life. Around the world, the entertainment industry is booming. Advancement in the technology and growing internet speeds have encouraged the world in spending a major portion of their time on their mobile and television screens. Entertainment startups in India and other biggies are lapping up this opportunity to bring in innovative options to the scene which makes the whole tussle more entertaining.
Millennials and Gen Z are the most tech-savvy generation. According to a report released by ‘Think with Google’, millennials spend around 7.5 hours online while Gen Z surfs online for nearly 10 hours. This data was enough to propel these startups to put their best foot forward in the race to capture a space in the fast-evolving entertainment industry.
Mobile Premier League
Post the success of fantasy gaming company Dream 11, another strong contender appeared onto the scene. The Mobile Premier League (MPL) was started by Sai Srinivas Kiran and Shubh Malhotra, on September, 2018, in Bengaluru.
Within two years MPL claims to have grown with over 25 million registered sign ups across both Android and iOS devices. According to the company’s chief executive Sai Srinivas Kiran, MPL’s maximum user base comes from non-metro cities. Providing users with a platform for mobile gaming, focusing primarily on gaming genres like arcade, skill or puzzle based, adventure games, sports and others. It also hosts multiplayer tournaments on its platform along with cash prizes.
WittyFeed
Indore based Vinay Singhal, Praveen Singhal and Shashank Vaishnav created a buzz on designing one of the most searched for sites in India. WittyFeed is an internet media and viral content company based in Indore, India. It publishes content on categories such as sports, news, fashion, lifestyle, travel, inspiration, relationships, health, fitness, and posts advertisements related to the content published.
The platform was started in September, 2014 and since then, the site has been ranked as India’s largest viral content company and the world’s second largest in terms of traffic numbers after ‘BuzzFeed’. Generating a revenue of approximate $6.2 million, WittyFeed is among the top 200 websites in the world with 120 million unique visitors to its website every month, and more than 420 million monthly page views, becoming first company from India to be among the top 75 and top 25 most-read websites in the United States and the United Kingdom.
EditorJi
How about reading news updates from a journalist’s pocket? Veteran and renowned journalist, Vikramaditya Chandra, launched a multilingual video news platform called EditorJi, on January 18, 2016. The Delhi-based startup uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms alongside human inputs to deliver curated news content to its users.
The app was launched on Android as well as iOS platforms, and is designed to serve short, 20 second news videos across genres such as politics, international news, local stories, sports news and stories, business news, lifestyle, technology, and entertainment.
The working of their platform to deliver content is simple. When a user opens the application, an algorithm instantly creates a personalised news list for the user. The user’s newscast is created by the user themselves; the application lets them select from multiple options as to which is the type of news they want to view. EditorJi had raised Rs 30 crore as seed funding from Bharti Airtel and HT Media. Presently, they claim to be producing close to 200 video stories per day and have a workforce of 70 people, as well as tie-ups with external firms, which provide technology and design services.
Pocket Aces
Ashwin Suresh, Anirudh Pandita and Aditi Srivastava, all three were educated in the US and had never been a part of the Indian entertainment industry. The trio ditched the ‘American Dream’ and established Pocket Aces in 2013 in Mumbai. Today they are at the forefront of digital entertainment in India.
Pocket Aces operates three socially distributed content brands including Filter Copy (short videos), Dice Media (multi-episode web series), and Gobble (food videos), as well as a direct-to-consumer platform Loco (live and interactive game show app). In the last 36 months, their socially distributed video network has garnered more than 2 billion video views, with a current monthly run rate of more than 350 million video views. It comes as no surprise that they have now earned the title of becoming India’s fastest growing digital entertainment company.
The company scored a big win when Netflix co-produced one of their long-form shows, Little Things. Going global through Netflix was one of the landmark moments for the company, and a huge success for their content creators, making them one of the most sought after entertainment startups in India for productions on social media.
Roposo
A social network for fashion lovers was born in 2014, when Mayank Bhangadia, Avinash Saxena, and Kaushal Shubhank, three IIT-Delhi graduates, decided to take inspiration from Flickr and design an online fashion discovery platform that employs a proprietary recommendation engine to match shoppers.
Presently the company is focusing on growth rather than profitability. Roposo usually generates revenue from advertisements and social commerce. Boasting close to 42 million users, the platform has 7.5 million user-generated posts and 5.5 billion video views a month, Roposo has become a hub for fashion bloggers.
The platform is presently available in 10 languages, including English, and claims to have 2.5 million daily active users, with the aim to expand their user base and grow their advertisement revenue.
You can find out more about these and other entertainment startups in India by searching for them on The Company Check!
