We are publishing an interview of Mr. Arpan Khosla: CEO – Content, Marketing, PR, Strategy, Rhymly.
Please tell us about the founders (e.g., Their names along with their skill-sets, specific domain expertise & designated roles, Whats the Story? When did you start working together etc.)
We are three founders. Arpan Khosla (myself), CEO – Content, Marketing, PR, Strategy), Vishal Kalra, CTO – Product Development and Aakansha Aggarwal, Head of Design – UI. Vishal is a junior of mine from college & Aakansha is a mutual friend for 6 years.
Give us a brief background of what founders were doing before starting the venture.
- Arpan Khosla: B.E. NSIT, Ass. Manager, Airtel, Professional Hindi Poet
- Vishal Kalra: B.E. NSIT, Software Dev Nearbuy.com, Business analyst Deloitte
- Aakansha Aggarwal: Architect, Morphogenesis, A B. Lal Architects, IP University
List all the names of the core team members, along with their skill-sets, specific domain expertise & designated roles. How do you see them evolving over time?
We are only 3 founders right now but looking to expand the team.
What is the problem you are trying to solve? Can you share with us any insights that led you to believe that this is a big enough problem?
Fact 1: Poetry, Lyrcis writing, advertising & content marketing is a 20B$ industry in India yet 4 out of 10 professionals suffer from continuous writer’s block. “Can there be a platform that helps professionals find exhaustive rhymes for their content, save their time while breaking their writer’s block?”
Fact 2: In the next 5 years, language users are expected to account for 75% of India’s Internet user base. “Can there be a vernacular platform that can help these users consume a variety of short content in their own language?”
Fact 3: 2 billion+ whatsapp good morning shayari, jokes, memes & festive messages sent every month in India. “Can there be a one-stop self expression platform which helps anyone write original, good quality & shareable photo content?”
What challenges did you face when you were starting out?
1) Running expenses
2) People thought that our product was niche. Eventually, they started using it themselves!
3) Organic PR & Customer acquisition
How did you get the initial capital? What returns does it have? Tell us about the investors (if any)
We are bootstrapped right now & we pooled money ourselves when we satrted out. We are at pre-revenue stage. Having said that, we are actively looking for seed investment
Please tell us about the Product / Solution. Explain how you went about the Product-Market Fit Process.
Rhymly is a multilingual one-stop content tech platform that helps budding creative writers search rhymes & meanings of Hindi words, create original couplets while rhyming on the fly, discover & share awesome content & also get themselves featured on the app every day.
What were your assumptions when you entered the market, learning that you have?
1) Our product will be suitable for writers, advertisers & content marketers
2) People love to Rhyme in India
3) People want to read entertaining content in short time
What is the insight that you have about this market, which no one else has? Uniqueness about your Startup.
I have been a poet & creative writer for 11 years & also have freelanced in content with a lot of brands. Hence, I understand both the sides of of coin very well.
We are the 1st in the market to bring out a multilingual Rhyming Search engine & also aim at crowdsourcing & monetizing content between writers & brands in India.
Our unique proposition is that we cover the entire process of short content rhyming, writing, storing, sharing & discovering on a single platform & a creative writer doesn’t need to go to multiple platforms for all these things.
What is the strength of the startup and the scale of operations? Who do You Perceive as Your Competition?
We have 6000 app downloads, 12000 web users, 35000 content pieces have been written & over 100000 searches have been done via our platform ( all organic )
Our competition comprises of:
- English Rhyming dictionaries ( eg. Rhymezone)
- Vocabulary engines ( Google Translate, Rekhta )
- Content curation ( Haiku Jam, Yourquote )
- Content Discovery ( Terribly Tiny Tales, Wittyfeed )
What is the revenue model? What is the logic behind it? What is the model you are following – Free / Freemium / Premium etc. ? Explain your thought process.
We have 5 revenue models apart from native ads:
- Commission per completed job requirement between writer & brand
- Leveraging our engine to 3rd party platforms who pay per search query basis
- Branded content
- Doing sponsored shows with big artists
- Freemium SaaS product for professional writers & B2B
Who are the consumers that you are targeting? How is this going to affect them?
B2C (poets, shayars, rappers, youtubers, songwriters & content readers) & B2B (ENTREPRENEURS, BRANDS, AD AGENCIES, FILM & THEATRE PRODUCTIONS, JINGLE WRITING COMPANIES).
We help Poets, Shayars, Songwriters, Rappers, ad agencies, jingle writers, etc. save a lot of time on their art pieces, break their writer’s block, create more & a better quality of content & concentrate only on creativity while leaving the Vocabulary part to us. Eventually, they will monetize & get regular work from it.
How did you get your first customer?
I performed at a poetry event on the launch day of the product & got my initial 100 downloads from there.
What is the big picture of your startup? Is this Product leading to something bigger? If so, how?
We aim to become the best content platform in the next 3 years & a leading marketplace for brands & writers.
Since inception, give us a sense of the value of business done by your venture? (From Launching till date total no. of visitors on website/persons registered/enquiries and enrollment).
18000 total users.
What would be your goal to accomplish in the next six months?
Going multilingual from Hindi to Hindi+English+Urdu+Punjabi. Also, our AI based engine is a work in progress & we expect it to be finished by then. Also, we are aiming to reach 2 lac downloads on smartphones.
What message do you want to convey to fellow entrepreneurs?
If you dream of something … then do not sleep over it!
Any other information you would like to share:
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