 "Buzzfeed India")
Buzzfeed India, which launched its operations in the country formally a week back, is willing to wait a couple a of years until it can start monetising content on its platform. The Indian website, buzzfeed.in, currently focuses on devleoping the content and fan-base as it has in countries like the United States of America and United Kingdom.
Buzzfeed's vice-president for international, Scott Lamb, believes that organic growth of fan-base through organic sharing on social media platforms is the cornerstone of a lasting online news portal. While the Indian platform will not be focussing on hard news and breaking stories, but will aim to provide views and counter views on contemporary issues.
"Our model is different than a quartz.com or such sites. We want to give Rega and her team to figure out their content (which will work in India) and their tone etc. We're in no rush to either go in for hard news or monetise the content as such," he explains.
Currently operating with a team of five people, the Buzzfeed India will look at expanding the team eventually. For now, it is happy being a start-up, albeit a very well funded one. Lamb reveals that the American parent does not mind investing in the Indian off-shoot of the site till it is time to monetise the platform. Estimates peg the cost of running a platform like Buzzfeed in India under Rs one crore a year.
"We are in no hurry. Even when we do start monetising the platform, we are going to steer away from the traditional advertising on digital. We do not want to be intrusive and the user experience should not be compromised. Banner ads and pop-ups are something we shall try and avoid. It will have to be something innovative and something that enhances the users' and advertisers' experience with the platform," explains Lamb.
Sponsored videos are an option that the team will be willing to explore. In this case, a brand sponsors a video that is related to a product in its portfolio. For example, a water purifier brand may opt to sponsor a video on the perils of unsafe drinking water, which can be posted on the website. Having said that, the video has to be relevant. Lamb believes that monetising the content once the user base will be the mode to make Buzzfeed India self sustaining, since "putting up a pay-wall between our content and readers is not something we may want to necessarily do," he says.
Rega Jha, the lead editor for Buzzfeed India has worked with the UK and US teams for almost a year now, and has taken up the mantle of leading content for the site's Indian variant. She explains that the team realised how culturally relevant content on the site resonated with the South Asian audiences and that is how the idea of Buzzfeed India started.
"I joined the team in the US last June and moved to New York. Being from India, writing about stuff that was Indian or had Indian sensibilites or around issues contemporary to the country came naturally to me. What we noticed was an increase in traffic on the site from the Indian sub-continent. For the Indian platform too, the idea will be to continue dishing out content that is relevant culturally, topical and interesting to readers," she explains.
Jha also adds, "What is very interesting about the internet audience in India is diverse and this means there is more scope to experiment with content. While Bollywood, politics and cricket will also catch traction in the country, today, there is a large segment of the society that is equally cued into international entertainment and politics. So when our New York or LA office post content about say a Game Of Thrones, it has massive readership from India as well."
Even in case of topics like Bollywood,Jha insists that the content will have a tongue-in-cheek approach and will steer clear of the "so-and-so spotted with xyz" kind ofapproach. "Instead, we might just havea post about a funny or quirky take on a hit like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham," she says. Other content themes include social issues which are contemporary in the Indian scenario. While currently, a lot of the content in terms of video is curated, eventually, the team intends to develop the video production part of content.
Apart from content, the platform hasbeen designed to be efficient on the mobile platform, since majority of the site's traffic in India comes from via mobile internet.
