Gurugram-based online education content startup Josh Talks, that provides a storytelling platform, to inspire viewers, broke even last year, by monetising platfrom through brand partnerships and advertisements.
The three-year-old startup witnessed a loss of ₹10 lakhs in 2015, a loss of ₹50 lakhs in 2016 before it broke even in 2017. The startup is now expecting a profit of around ₹2 crores this year, owing to its monetisation techniques.
It is generating revenue through online and offline channels. Online revenue is generated from advertising through brand partnerships and YouTube, while, the offline programs are usually co-created properties along with sponsors.
Josh Talks was founded by Shobhit Banga and Supriya Paul in January 2015. It was established with a view to inspire and enable young India to achieve their goals, by tapping into their latent potential.
It has provided a robust platform for speakers from varied backgrounds, including, entrepreneurship, public policy, sports, entertainment, and social initiatives, to cater reach a wider audience with varied interests.
Josh Talks provides a multi-lingual platform, providing content in more than 8 Indian languages, including Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, and Punjabi, apart from Hindi and English. It has not only touched the lives for people living in metropolitans but through the use of local language, it has also penetrated the tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
The platform claims to have showcased more than 1,500 talks, touching over 100 million live, through online and offline channels.
The content is curated in the form of personal experiences and stories to be relatable to this audience and is also delivered in languages that are understandable by them. There is no other knowledge sharing platform in the country that exists in vernacular languages,” said Supriya Paul, Co-founder, Josh Talks
The startup raised funds in an angel funding round led by Girish Mathrubootham of Freshworks, along with participation from other angel investors including, Rohit Chanana, head of strategy and finance at Hero Corporation, Apurva Chamaria, global brand director at IT services firm HCL, among others.