Founded in 2013, ScoopWhoop is India’s most engaging youth media platform for social news & entertainment largely appealing to the 16 – 35 age group, India’s millennials. The platform drives 30 million unique active users, 250 million video views and over 400 million content views across channels per month. ScoopWhoop is the fastest growing digital media company in India and its content is consumed widely across the country.
Rishi Pratim Mukherjee, Co-Founder & CEO at ScoopWhoop Media, spoke on the evolution of the platform, the foray into Hindi Market and much more…
It has been 7 years since ScoopWhoop was launched, can you take us through your journey?
Despite the fact that none of us had worked in publishing before, we saw the opportunity and pioneered a new kind of media company – one that was born on the internet and created for and by digital natives. Our years spent in advertising had helped hone a keen sense of what makes pop culture and that’s now become ScoopWhoop’s biggest strength.
When we started off, we were largely limited to curating topical content based on data and trends. However, as we evolved, we realised that the true strength of a media company comes not only from the curation of content but more from the original content created in-house which ultimately helps in forging what the brand stands for.
ScoopWhoop’s success lies in the brand love that we have built over the years. Diversity in the editorial room helped us connect deeply with diverse audiences and build a relationship with them through the content we created. When much in house talent became the faces that our audience directly interacts with, this relationship only grew stronger. Our people bring a unique character to the content we create – whether it’s how we cover news and politics, to our take on food, travel, fashion to what TV show to watch next, to our meme game on Instagram – a vital part of these is people and personality-driven. That, I think has been the secret to building a deep connection with young India and becoming an influential voice across their passion points.
From being simply a ‘listicle’ platform, today ScoopWhoop is young India’s go-to destination to discover what is trending now and is widely considered as a brand that is on the cutting edge of youth culture in India.
In these years how have the millennials’ thought process changed?
Millennials are not just entertainment seekers. They are very selective in consuming content from the plethora of choices available. It has to be relatable and be on a platform they are comfortable with where they can view it as per their convenience. It is more important than ever to create content that is relatable, engaging and delivered through channels which the user is comfortable with.
In fact, we are seeing that information has never been more interesting to this audience. Particularly in the smaller towns, there’s a curiosity and hunger to just ‘know more’. It’s just about delivering it in a way that’s easy to consume and share. And of course, relatable stories of being young in India today continue to excite.
ScoopWhoop has now ventured into the Hindi market, your thoughts and strategy behind this move?
We had launched ScoopWhoop Hindi some 3 years ago with the view of reaching out a completely different audience than the one being served by ScoopWhoop English as we saw an opportunity arising out of the explosion in mobile phone adoption and data rates nose-diving making it highly affordable for users in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Whereas there exists a plethora of choices for the urban English content consuming user in India with international and local content sources, the Hindi and the regional language content consumer is underserved when it comes to high quality millennial-focused content. There is a clear gap which exists in the market where all content producers are solely focusing on breaking and political news and not enough lifestyle content. ScoopWhoop Hindi was launched to fill this gap.
How has been the growth especially in the Hindi market?
This year has seen tremendous growth for us on ScoopWhoop Hindi with users and PVs growing 3x when compared from Jan to Sep 2020
Are there any plans to venture into other regional markets?
We wish to consolidate our position in the Hindi market for the immediate future and then foray into other regions. Our immediate goal is to break into the 10 Mn MAU mark from the current 6-7 Mn.
Which are the markets you have targeted for Hindi, is it Tier 2 & 3?
All major cities and town that makeup the Hindi belt
How different is the Hindi content from English?
ScoopWhoop Hindi engages specifically with Hindi speaking millennial with addictive and relatable content. The content spans everything from entertainment & social news, to infotainment to original video content. Our original content captures the aspirations of Hindi-speaking audiences by making sure there is always a touch of regional interest which makes it very ‘desi’. It retains the quintessential ScoopWhoop flavor that the audiences across India know and love.
