India is seeing a shift in content consumption. The trend has shifted from newspapers to TV and now, most recently and the most popular way of getting news or information is through social media channels or more widely - The Internet.
With the changing tides in consumption, the format of news is also seeing a rapid change. Short, brief and crisp news is now preferred over long stories. As people get busier, the news content needs to get crispier.
Metrosaga - Stories of Your City
In this context, inevitably the Indian social media space looks crowded with the number of meme and entertainment pages. However, there are a few platforms that are striving to create meaningful content with consistency and authenticity intact.
One such platform is Metrosaga, a Bengaluru-based media and entertainment company.
Metrosaga is a multi-niche media platform that creates content in its all forms - article, video, image, and more. Their crisp three-minute video stories on social media are the most popular among all, easily reaching millions in no time.
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Driven by a passion to write compelling stories about Bengaluru and Karnataka, Metrosaga was launched in 2018 as a simple Wordpress blog.
"I used to read articles in platforms like ScoopWhoop, BuzzFeed who largely focus on Delhi-Mumbai. I thought why shouldn't I start something like that for my city, Bengaluru. With the same intent, I started writing articles in categories like food, travel, and news," said Shrinag, founder and editor-in-chief of Metrosaga, speaking about the initial days.
"In the first three months, the blog saw a readership of over 1 Million, which gave me the confidence to expand it to a new scale, and new categories," Shrinag added.
For almost a year, the blog was single-handedly managed by Shrinag before turning it into a professional news website and a company in large.
Today, MetroSaga is a team of 20 members working as a part of Bro4u Online services Pvt ltd., a funded hyperlocal home service platform based in Bengaluru with branches in Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Delhi.
"I had no media budget, no tech wizardry, and no revenue stream. Stories started going viral, from day one. I was confident about MetroSaga's growth but it took time to convince my chief strategist, Pramod Hegde, who is also the founder of Bro4u.com to come in and help scale MetroSaga to its next phase," Shrinag further said.
Metrosaga - Beyond Bengaluru and Vision
Today, Metrosaga clocks a monthly readership of two million to its website but the strength of this platform is its compelling video stories on Facebook.
Metrosaga creates short and crisp three-four minute video stories that manage to reach 40 million people monthly.
The platform has sub-pages on Facebook catering to a different set of an audience; Metrosaga India (Pan India and Global), Metrosaga Bengaluru (city-level), and Metrosaga Kannada (regional).
"Very soon, we are planning to go vernacular, producing content in all major Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and more. In the next five years, the vision is to become a larger news and entertainment solution in India," said Shrinag, sharing about the company's vision.
Reach and Competition
It's the user-first approach that drives Metrosaga to its success it is enjoying today. The platform claims to have a monthly social reach of 40 Million with 20 million monthly engagements.
With the 700k community of followers and reach in millions, they claim, they are the largest digital news video publisher in Bengaluru today.
The platform is chalking plans to garner more followers on TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram, which to date, primarily focused on building a follower base on Facebook.
The dollars are moving to a more accountable area. With digital being the most measurable medium, brands are looking forward to leveraging it as the medium breaks the wall and provides more transparency for them to connect to their target audience.
It's an interesting space for advertisers and MetroSaga bank on this as a revenue model apart from ad revenue sharing.
Regionally, Metrosaga is enjoying the first-mover advantage but nationally and globally, it is competing with digital media houses like Brut, The Logical Indian, Scoopwhoop and others, on a category level.
By the end of 2020, Metrosaga is expected to have its following count to four million and video reach of 100 million per month.
It is also in talks with venture capitalists to raise funding to further scale its business and operations.
This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article.