Bahl, founder and promoter of Network 18, and his wife Ritu Kapur have just launched mobile-first news platform, The Quint. Now, it’s a wait-and-watch to see if they are as successful and disruptive in their new avatar as entrepreneurs
By Simran Sabherwal
You can’t keep a good man down, goes the saying. And it’s 100% true in the case of Raghav Bahl. In May 2014, just after Mukesh Ambani gained majority stake in Network 18 by converting the debentures he held into shares, the exit of the company’s founder Bahl had people wondering what his next step would be. Keeping his entrepreneurial streak alive, Bahl along with his wife Ritu Kapur, has now launched not one but two start-ups - Quintillion Media, a pure-bred digital media company, and Quintype, a digital publishing and analytics service. The first brand from this enterprise is The Quint, a mobile-first digital news platform which had a soft launch on Facebook on January 9 this year, followed by launch of its Beta version in March.
It’s A Mobile-First
World today
After leaving Network18, Bahl says that he had two options – to become an angel investor (it is estimated that he got Rs 700 crore on his exit from Network18) or take on the challenge of building another business. The answer was simple – build another business in media. “When the choice of media was clear, we analysed what is it in media that is cutting edge and going to be the driver of business growth for the next 10 years? We knew it had to be Digital, and realized that media consumption is now headed to the hand-held device. This is the big growth area and where we should be concentrating our energies,” says Bahl. The responsibilities for the new venture have been split between him and Ritu Kapur, with he chairing the editorial meetings, bringing in his experience and understanding of content, handling strategic and financial decisions and mapping the growth profile of the company, while her focus is on the day-to-day operations, the product, its personality and content.
The Quint covers the entire spectrum of political news, listicles, technology, health, videos, etc. While the product is up and running, Bahl claims it is at about 10% of the intended final product, as both the site and mobile experience are still Beta and a lot of the functionalities such as hyperlink, apps, analytics-driven consumption, personalization, etc., are yet to be implemented.
Interestingly, The Quint was first previewed on Facebook and this strategy has worked well as 45-60% of the audiences on any day comes in from Facebook. Working closely with Facebook, the team understood the platform and is now looking at other social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Says Kapur, “The philosophy that is emerging in new media for publishers is that it’s not about their home-page, landing page or website, it is being where the audience is. It is how the brand is building loyalty and how content is consumed wherever the audiences are. We are on mobile phones, because our audiences are on mobile phones.”
Marriage of Content
and Technology
While content remains the cornerstone, the simple fact that mobile is the consumption screen means that technology plays a much larger role than it would on other devices, including desktop sites. With equal investments in content and technology, Bahl says the company had to create engineering capabilities resulting in a marriage of sorts between the two start-ups - Quintillion Media which runs the consumer-facing The Quint and Quintype, a B2B product with a mandate to create a globally benchmarked digital publishing platform. Quintype will offer cloud-based solutions to help publishers with editorial solutions and aid publishing in various formats including mobile phones, tablets, desktop and develop apps for iOS & Android. Quintype will also assist with other technical functionalities including predictive analytics to help schedule articles, social media integration, content recommendation engine, even enable e-commerce transactions seamlessly from a media site. Bahl says, “The new tech functionalities will set us apart from the current publishing platforms. Both these start-ups are running parallelly, one feeding off the other and both will become reasonably mature and come out of the BETA phase in about six to nine months time. Our target is that by the end of the year, we will have The Quint and Quintype both achieving possibly 60-70% of their functionalities and that’s when we will start worrying about revenues.”
Monetization remains
The Big Challenge
With digital platforms still struggling to strike the right note when it comes to revenue generation, Bahl draws a comparison with CNBC-TV18, where revenues followed audiences. He believes the digital model will follow the same pattern but revenue monetization and format will be a bit innate to this device and be advertiser-driven. So, the focus will be on native, customized advertising, sponsored content, geo-targeted content, geo-targeted advertising and programmatic advertising based on demographic profiles. Bahl says, “The ability of the mobile device to target is the one big revelation in the last one year. When you have this kind of audience available to you, targeted advertising has to come. It is a question of people getting used to the power of this medium.” Two key factors which will aid growth will be faster Internet speed and high mobile penetration. Bahl sees the tipping point to be at 300 million smartphones, which will be reached in the next 18 months, and adds, “I am convinced that the tipping point is one or two years away. This is a god given period to us to get our product and technology right.”
Advent of the
Advertising Editor
As the terms of content engagement change, the ability to geo-target on the mobile device will see the focus shift to creating content that is credible, useful and valuable to a targeted audience. In addition, the ability to be seamless and geo/demographically target means that native content on the mobile device is an inevitability. With silos in newsrooms disappearing, rules and roles are constantly changing and Kapur says this has seen the emergence of new profiles such as an audience engagement editor, who understands content, social media, digital marketing and the advertiser and works in tandem with sales.
Looking Ahead
into the future
In an honest confession, Bahl notes that a learning from the two decades spent at Network18 is the need to work with a business plan. He says, “Here, we are very disciplined about our business plan, which we were not at Network18.” Looking ahead, he adds, “At the current level of operations, the current product should break even in about 30-36 months. We had seen that with Firstpost, but we are not going to stop at the current level of operations. There will be newer operations, where and when they break even is difficult to predict unless we know what those operations are going to be.” On the positive side, a learning from Network18 was managing global partnerships, which the group had mastered better than anybody else in the media space. So, it isn’t a surprise that The Quint has already had feelers sent out by global players and the company could look at partnerships in the future, bringing value to both partners. When asked about the secret behind the many partnerships, often with competing media firms, Bahl says, “We would see an issue from the other guy’s point of view. It would be honest and straightforward, and not trying to make money at the expense of the foreign partner; rather creating value together in the business.” While international tie-ups may be a while away, a Hindi version is the next port of call and is expected to be up and running soon.
The Challenges
before Raghav Bahl
While technology plays a key role and is an enabler, the big challenge is keeping up with the frequent developments in the domain. Kapur believes it is critical to stay ahead of the technological curve. She says, “The challenge is how do you stay ahead of technology and make it easy for people to consume content. The challenge is also in creating compelling verticals.”
However, a big challenge will be making The Quint stand out and differentiate itself in an over-crowded space where the reader is spoilt for choice. While legacy desktop players such as TimesofIndia and Firstpost have made the transition to the mobile space, new entrants like Scroll.in have also made space for themselves and have first-mover advantage. Not to mention the entry of many international publications such as Huffington Post (in partnership with Times Internet), Quartz, ZDNet and Mashable, who have launched or are in the process of launching India-focused editions. The latest entrant is a news website called The Wire, launched by former editor of The Hindu, Siddharth Varadarajan and senior journalist-editor Sidharth Bhatia. Expected to join this list soon are journalists Shekhar Gupta and Barkha Dutt, with their new media ventures. Bahl believes that at the moment, the digital medium is in a disruptive mode, a time for both legacy and new players to spot an opportunity. He says, “Some legacy players will be able to make the transition to digital and hand-held devices. There will be new players like us who are trying to become meaningful and significant. I am convinced that there will be five significant players; of which three could be legacy players and two new players or vice-versa.”
One look at Bahl’s career timeline, and it is apparent that he always entered new territories when they were in a nascent stage – be it Newstrack when the VCR phenomenon entered India, or his production company TV18 to supply content just when cable & satellite was entering India or launching India’s first business news channel. Bahl has been an early mover and made his mark at every stage. It will be interesting to see if history repeats itself and team Bahl and Kapur taste success all over again.
