 "News, short & digestible")
Greece might exit the European Union and Chinese markets have tumbled - latest developments and analysis bombard us round-the-clock, and can be a bother with all that detail.
So feels Nitish Sharma, a part-time management student and full-time entrepreneur. "News is important but can be painstakingly elaborate. For a busy person, it is impossible to keep track. Often, we miss so much."
Enter News In Shorts, a mobile application that works as a news curator. Launched in 2013, it solves the problem Sharma and many more like him face. Founded by Azhar Iqubal and Anunay Arunav of IIT-Delhi, and Deepit Purkayastha of IIT-Kharagpur, News In Shorts summarises news stories in 60 words or less.
"The media targets avid readers. We wanted to take news to a larger audience, which is how the idea of News In Shorts was born," said Iqubal, chief executive. It allows users to scan news stories in a short span of time. It also allows users to go back to the source of any story they might be interested in, which helps them filter their reading.
The app recently raised $20 million in a Series-B funding from existing investor Tiger Global, while in February invested $4 million in the company. Rebright Partners of Japan and existing investors Sachin and Binny Bansal also participated. "Mobile content is ripe for disruption and the News in Shorts team understands the opportunities very well. We believe they can revolutionise the way content is being consumed on mobile devices," said Lee Fixel of Tiger Global.
The TLABS incubatee company had raised its seed round in June 2014, led by angel investors and mentors Ankush Nijhawan, Gaurav Bhatnagar and Manish Dhingra, with participation from Flipkart co-founders Sachin and Binny Bansal, as well as Times Internet.
Beginning shot
News In Shorts started off as a Facebook page, six months prior to its official launch in September 2013. "Our Facebook page was set up to test our business model. Within a couple of weeks, the page had between 10,000 to 20,000 'likes', was proof we were on the right track," said Purkayastha.
Due to limited bandwidth, the app started with summarising only 60 articles a day. That number has increased to 80. The next target: 120.
Challenges
"The main challenges in the beginning was ensuring users spent enough time reading the story summaries. Now, our readers peruse at least 90 per cent of our news," said Purkayastha. The company also faced a major challenge in trying to ensure smooth functioning of the app.
Dhingra, one of the angel investors, said social media should act as a strong vehicle to increase brand penetration and not be viewed as competition. Attracting and retaining world -class talent in today's world is going to be another challenge.
Revenue model
The app is currently free for download on both the Android and iOS platforms. The company has no revenue model.
"News In Shorts is not generating any revenue. Our target right now is to increase our user base and provide them a seamless news experience," said Iqubal.
Discussing a future revenue model, he said, "News In Shorts is used as a base platform to send users to other news website via article outlinks. This can be looked at as a model for revenue generation."
Listing other options, he said a pay per article module could also be considered. "We might also look at sponsored content as an opportunity for revenue generation," added Iqubal.
The app, which has a million downloads till date, aims at achieving five million by the end of 2015.
Road ahead
Currently, the company focuses mainly on summarising news articles based on pure facts. In the months to come, they plan on scaling up to include opinion pieces, too. "Opinion pieces form a different part of the media system. We might look at possibilities to bring that part of the media system into our environment and collaborate the two," said Purkayastha.
Talking about the road ahead, Dhingra said, "We believe News In Shorts is a consumer behaviour-changing application. It is the future of news and media consumption for the millennial generation. The scalability in the company has to come at all levels-scalable content, scalable technology and scalable personalisation."
"We see ourselves developing as a discovery platform for content in a couple of years," says Purkayastha, on a note of confidence.
EXPERT TAKE: Haresh Chawla
Journalists hate it. Editors hate it. The rest of us can lament about it, but we are now an attention-deficit economy. So, while my generation prefers longer reads and has identified trusted sources of news - for several millions of the next generation of readers, their first consumption of news will be on the smartphone.
And News In Shorts plays squarely into this behaviour - it replicates the scan-more-read-less habit on the mobile and makes news more accessible to the young smartphone users.
The key challenge for such a venture - both in maintaining relevance and monetisation - is that it needs to figure what it stands for. Does it become the de-facto gateway to mainstream news on the mobile or will monetisation pressures compel it to curate snacking content, leading to dilution of its positioning and franchise.
Consumers have a sixth sense about these things - if you look at Facebook's failure with the Pages app - it failed because Facebook is not seen as a credible source of news and people don't want a mish-mash of news and content snacking .
On the other hand google news has worked, since it does minimal curation - and depends on the original news editors to do the job. People know where to get their news, and where to get their fix of gossip/masala - and the sources occupy different slots of trust and credibility in our minds. Thus, the balance between promoted news or personalised content and mainstream news will be crucial. They have to get that right - and then they have an even larger base waiting in the under-served vernacular markets in India.
So feels Nitish Sharma, a part-time management student and full-time entrepreneur. "News is important but can be painstakingly elaborate. For a busy person, it is impossible to keep track. Often, we miss so much."
Enter News In Shorts, a mobile application that works as a news curator. Launched in 2013, it solves the problem Sharma and many more like him face. Founded by Azhar Iqubal and Anunay Arunav of IIT-Delhi, and Deepit Purkayastha of IIT-Kharagpur, News In Shorts summarises news stories in 60 words or less.
| FACT BOX |
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"The media targets avid readers. We wanted to take news to a larger audience, which is how the idea of News In Shorts was born," said Iqubal, chief executive. It allows users to scan news stories in a short span of time. It also allows users to go back to the source of any story they might be interested in, which helps them filter their reading.
The app recently raised $20 million in a Series-B funding from existing investor Tiger Global, while in February invested $4 million in the company. Rebright Partners of Japan and existing investors Sachin and Binny Bansal also participated. "Mobile content is ripe for disruption and the News in Shorts team understands the opportunities very well. We believe they can revolutionise the way content is being consumed on mobile devices," said Lee Fixel of Tiger Global.
The TLABS incubatee company had raised its seed round in June 2014, led by angel investors and mentors Ankush Nijhawan, Gaurav Bhatnagar and Manish Dhingra, with participation from Flipkart co-founders Sachin and Binny Bansal, as well as Times Internet.
Beginning shot
News In Shorts started off as a Facebook page, six months prior to its official launch in September 2013. "Our Facebook page was set up to test our business model. Within a couple of weeks, the page had between 10,000 to 20,000 'likes', was proof we were on the right track," said Purkayastha.
Due to limited bandwidth, the app started with summarising only 60 articles a day. That number has increased to 80. The next target: 120.
Challenges
"The main challenges in the beginning was ensuring users spent enough time reading the story summaries. Now, our readers peruse at least 90 per cent of our news," said Purkayastha. The company also faced a major challenge in trying to ensure smooth functioning of the app.
Dhingra, one of the angel investors, said social media should act as a strong vehicle to increase brand penetration and not be viewed as competition. Attracting and retaining world -class talent in today's world is going to be another challenge.
Revenue model
The app is currently free for download on both the Android and iOS platforms. The company has no revenue model.
"News In Shorts is not generating any revenue. Our target right now is to increase our user base and provide them a seamless news experience," said Iqubal.
Discussing a future revenue model, he said, "News In Shorts is used as a base platform to send users to other news website via article outlinks. This can be looked at as a model for revenue generation."
Listing other options, he said a pay per article module could also be considered. "We might also look at sponsored content as an opportunity for revenue generation," added Iqubal.
The app, which has a million downloads till date, aims at achieving five million by the end of 2015.
Road ahead
Currently, the company focuses mainly on summarising news articles based on pure facts. In the months to come, they plan on scaling up to include opinion pieces, too. "Opinion pieces form a different part of the media system. We might look at possibilities to bring that part of the media system into our environment and collaborate the two," said Purkayastha.
Talking about the road ahead, Dhingra said, "We believe News In Shorts is a consumer behaviour-changing application. It is the future of news and media consumption for the millennial generation. The scalability in the company has to come at all levels-scalable content, scalable technology and scalable personalisation."
"We see ourselves developing as a discovery platform for content in a couple of years," says Purkayastha, on a note of confidence.
EXPERT TAKE: Haresh Chawla
Journalists hate it. Editors hate it. The rest of us can lament about it, but we are now an attention-deficit economy. So, while my generation prefers longer reads and has identified trusted sources of news - for several millions of the next generation of readers, their first consumption of news will be on the smartphone.
And News In Shorts plays squarely into this behaviour - it replicates the scan-more-read-less habit on the mobile and makes news more accessible to the young smartphone users.
The key challenge for such a venture - both in maintaining relevance and monetisation - is that it needs to figure what it stands for. Does it become the de-facto gateway to mainstream news on the mobile or will monetisation pressures compel it to curate snacking content, leading to dilution of its positioning and franchise.
Consumers have a sixth sense about these things - if you look at Facebook's failure with the Pages app - it failed because Facebook is not seen as a credible source of news and people don't want a mish-mash of news and content snacking .
On the other hand google news has worked, since it does minimal curation - and depends on the original news editors to do the job. People know where to get their news, and where to get their fix of gossip/masala - and the sources occupy different slots of trust and credibility in our minds. Thus, the balance between promoted news or personalised content and mainstream news will be crucial. They have to get that right - and then they have an even larger base waiting in the under-served vernacular markets in India.
Haresh Chawla is partner, India Value Fund and former group CEO Network18