In an interview to the weekly advertising, media and marketing news magazine Impact, Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur, co-founders of The Quint spoke about their digital yatra in setting-up a mobile-first news platform.
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.
—Impact
Both spoke extensively on the challenges and opportunities in the age of new media with the tipping point being the reach of 300 million smartphones in the next 18 months.
Your ability to enter an industry and create a space for yourself is much higher when the industry is in a disruptive mode. The legacy players have to protect their existing franchise while creating something new; some don’t have the band-width, appetite, hunger or just don’t want to do it, this is where the space for a new guy gets created.
—Raghav Bahl to Impact
Bahl also speaks about how Indian regulations are anti-entrepreneurial. Quintillion Media CEO Ritu Kapur, speaks about building the business from scratch and the challenge of creating engaging content for young consumers.
Looking at the most read pieces over a month, we see a beautiful balance of serious content, intelligent content, edgy content, fun content, video visuals.Because it’s a start up, it’s about getting the office together from the chairs to the air-conditioning to the cafeteria to dealing with the issues of young, bright people in the team and their highs and lows on an everyday basis to what are we doing next and what else can be done.
—Ritu Kapur to Impact
The feature article published on 1 June 2015 observes, “it’s a wait-and-watch to see if they are as successful and disruptive in their new avatar as entrepreneurs.”
Read the complete article here.
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