"Branding and marketing are the only areas we need to invest in": Inshorts CEO and co-founder Azhar Iqubal

News app Inshorts, that boasts 4 million downloads, recently released its first digital ad film. CEO and co-founder Azhar Iqubal tells us that revenue generation, optimal allocation of VC-funds, and becoming a marketplace for content are the goals that keep his 70-member team busy.

When IIT dropouts Azhar Iqubal and Anunay Arunav, along with their peer Deepit Purkayastha (who went on to complete his engineering degree), launched the Inshorts android app in September 2013, their decision, says Iqubal, was backed largely by intuition. Recently, the app that brings news, current affairs, and content to users in 60 words, released its first ad 'Short Mein Jaano', to woo the internet audience. And, according to Iqubal, the 23-year-old CEO and co-founder of Inshorts, to come up with a brand campaign at this juncture, was again an intuitive move.

But, instincts are "not mere knee-jerk reactions to situations," he cautions, adding that they are acquired out of a deep understanding of whatever one is involved with. "In our case, it is the product, its users, and the overall business," says Iqubal.

Discussing the growth of the brand, Iqubal shares that Inshorts started out with close to one lakh downloads at the start of 2015 and finished the year at three million. He credits the almost "30 times growth" to many factors that played out simultaneously. As the trio started off when just out-of-college, the first year was spent in understanding news and apps. It was only by the end of 2014 that Inshorts began publishing 70-80 stories per day and the app became stable; it didn't crash, and the images, that cover 50 per cent of the screen, were now loading perfectly.

Currently, the android app has around four million downloads. It is rated 4.6 on Google Play, which, claims Iqubal, is the highest among all news apps across play stores globally (second highest being 4.4). According to App Annie, an app analytics and app market data firm headquartered in San Francisco, California, it has the third largest android market share in terms of number of active users in India, after The Times of India and NewsHunt. Inshorts has over 10 per cent of its user base on iOS (launched in July 2014).

In February last year, the company raised $4 million in the Series A round led by Tiger Global, with participation from Rebright Partners of Japan and existing angels Ankush Nijhawan, Gaurav Bhatnagar, Manish Dhingra, and Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal. Three months later, it raised another $20 million from Tiger Global in Series B funding which was used to propel the company's growth, through investment in talent acquisition and branding, says Iqubal.

"We started exploring brand marketing after crossing a million downloads. Before that, our main concern was to fix the technical aspects and to publish more content. This ad is our first experiment for the internet audience, a large chunk of which we still haven't reached. Probably when we have exhausted the digital user pool, and we are at, say 10-20 million downloads, we will explore other ATL mediums," informs Iqubal.

Talking about the Inshorts advantage in the online start-up world, he says, "Unlike the e-commerce players, who have to bear the cost of discounts given to customers on every transaction, we only have to bear the cost of serving our four million users with 120-150 stories per day with the help of a 30-editor team, and an overall staff of 70 people. Other than the cost of acquiring a user, which comes to around $1-2 per user, there is no other cost we incur on him/her. Hence, branding and marketing are the only areas we need to invest in."

And, on competition in the short-form content space, Inshorts' closest competitor, one assumes, is the microblogging site Twitter. But, Iqubal differs. "Our users are not the ones who follow news throughout the day; they come to the app periodically, get their dose of quick, concise information, and leave. Moreover, in 140 characters you can only give the headline, and Twitter is limiting in that sense. For details, you still have to click on the link and read the full story. But, we do not always have the time to go into details. That's where Inshorts helps. It gives you the entire story in just 60 words," he explains.

Inshorts began as News in Shorts in 2013 as a Facebook page. After the second round of funding, the app-only venture re-branded itself (as Inshorts) in a bid to evolve from being a news aggregator to a content discovery platform, providing a range of content streams such as videos, infographics, podcasts, and blogs.

"The idea behind the re-branding was to re-define news. Our purpose is to educate and inform the user about 'what's going on'. For instance, we do a daily piece on the most-searched term on Google. While that's not news, it's a high interest story. Earlier, news used to be just politics, but now, things are changing," says Iqubal adding that, now, the focus is on evolving further as a "marketplace for content and exploring opportunities for revenue generation."

Inshorts has partnered with over 30 publications for content. The names include Sportskeeda, Catch News, MotorScribes, The Indian Express Group, the 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.

As of now, most publications give access to their content which is condensed into a 60-word story by a team of 30 editors at Inshorts. However, going further, Iqubal and team want to get into agreements wherein the editors/writers of the partner publication also write the 60-word summary for their articles and upload it on the app themselves, thereby making Inshorts a marketplace for short-form content.

For revenue generation, the app has started experimenting with sponsored content.

"Sponsored content is no new format, but so far, it has been presented subjectively to users. We want to do it in a manner that's objective and non-intrusive. We believe people like to see the right kind of advertisement, one that has been tailored for them in the right way. If you are a foodie, you are surely going to like a story on 'most-searched restaurant on Zomato last week', while an article on 'most-sold smartphone on Amazon in a particular month' will interest the gadget freak," insists Iqubal.

To this end, the company is working on personalisation of content and on making the app more interactive by bringing in the social element. Recently, it introduced the 'like' feature, and an additional one called Toss. Toss allows the user to send notifications to his/her friends on behalf of the app.

"The idea behind the introduction of Toss was to democratise news. Until now, the power to send notifications was limited to the publishers, who centrally decide what you should know/read. But, we want to take this power from the newsroom to the public," asserts Iqubal.

Buoyed by the success in India, the company wants to take the 'Short Mein Jaano' model to the markets abroad as well, by the end of this year. It also plans to release the app in vernacular languages.