Youth made Quint successful
Ritu Kapur ( founder, The Quint) shared the secret sauce of Quint’s success yesterday. She spoke at Simply Fest’s event. I also met…
Ritu Kapur ( founder, The Quint) shared the secret sauce of Quint’s success yesterday. She spoke at Simply Fest’s event.
I also met interesting small business owners such as Rajneesh of Simply HR, Charu of Le Hedonist, Sahil of Miago and Ashmeet from I Say Organic. .
How successful is Quint?
It runs 6 news verticals; Quint English & Hindi ( general news), Neon ( Buzzfeed of India), Fit English & Hindi ( health) and Bloomberg Quint ( business news)
Its total monthly visits range between 4 million and 6 million. It’s share of voice is higher than its competitors.
How did Quint happen?
Reliance Industries took over Network 18 in 2014. Without wasting time Ritu & Raghav Behl ( another co-founder) decided to launch a mobile first news upstart, focusing on the youth. They toured newsrooms of digital news media companies such as Buzzfeed, Primsmatic and Vox to learn.
They chose the name Quint ( 10 to the power of 18) from a name generator app during a flight.
They also started developing their tech such as Quint Type, a CMS software. At first they launched The Quint on Facebook in 2014.Finally they launched their app and the website.
How is it doing now?
It ranks amongst the top 1100 websites of India. Guiding Tech, a standalone tech website also has similar numbers.
56% of their traffic comes from search, 23% from social, 13% via direct, and 8% comes via referrals, mail and banners.
Quint English is their show stopper, attracting 95% of the traffic.
Their revenue comes from placing native and banner ads. Ritu said that revenues weren’t pouring in yet. They are self funded. Quint hasn’t declared profits yet. She did not disclose the financial numbers.
Ok, secret sauce please:
Ritu said that they unlearnt a lot of broadcast templates ( fixed slots and programming). They focussed more on software, and less on hardware. Initially they did not have a sales team. They focussed on the product.
They became technology and audience led news company. Also, they allowed the youth to lead the newsroom.
Quint experimented with videos. Earlier they produced 40 seconds videos. These days they also produce 12 minute videos. Ritu started Quint Lab to experiment with formats and ideas.
Interesting stories from Quint: