A journalist. A radio jockey. And an amateur blogger. And 9 years later, one of the media influencers of our time and technology.
When Malini Agarwal commenced her eponymous weblog way again in 2008, it changed into on the advice of a chum. “When you’re a gossip columnist for a primary newspaper like Mid-Day, you develop a network of Bollywood celebrities and much extra,” begins Malini’s husband Nowshad Rizwanullah. “Add in the radio gig at Radio One and she had get entry to to the proper of form of humans, events, and parties and so on. What she didn’t have became the column inches to put in writing approximately all of the goings on that she became invited to be part of.”
Blogging was now not the most effective ardour Malini located at that point of time. “She become, I would say, one of the early adopters of social media in India. I left to pursue my schooling at Harvard Business School across the same time Malini started the blog and in fact, she even got a first rate Twitter following manner again then,” he adds.
And then some thing exciting came about. According to Nowshad, the blog was hitting approximately 3K monthly views via 2009. “But that’s not the thrilling element. It was the quantity of remarks that she used to get. They were insane. Friends might remark, buddies of buddies could come onto the web page and engage with her.”
And the blogger located some thing essential, something that also is the spine of the commercial enterprise she has founded – MissMalini. The US had a Huffington Post, PopSugar, and different such virtual structures where millennials ought to speak and interact with every different in a significant way. India had no such region in which they may get in on the action – be it Bollywood or way of life or leisure. “There was no real voice inside the media on the time representing younger, Indian millennials. Nothing from our age group talking to our age organization,” he says.
This turned into a watershed moment for group MM.
From A Blog To An Inc – Making Of A Business
“Malini parlayed the blogging gig into a role with Channel V where she became the Head of Digital Content someplace in 2009. But, the fact is, she was hooked onto writing. As have been the readers. So she could work on the day job after which weblog at night,” he reminisces.
Nowshad stocks that once he got here back from finishing his MBA diploma, he took up a function in funding company Nomura. “Our time table changed into crazy. I worked days and she or he worked nights at a pink carpet occasion or movie premiere and then we might spend what little time we had identifying what to position at the blog. And then we had advertiser interest in our blog,” he provides.
Native layout advertising, that which MissMalini and others of its ilk are recognized for nowadays, turned into a very distinct animal again then – nascent and just getting into the virtual domain. Where brands have been slowly realising that purchasers did no longer want to be advertised to, however talked to. There had been no policies and clearly no person the front chief when it came to marketplace proportion.
“When we got advertiser interest, we realised we have been onto something right here. That this didn’t simply have to be a weblog about Insider Bollywood for readers. It will be an actual business. And as a enterprise, it became too much for simply one man or woman to handle,” he says.
Mike Melli (Chief Revenue Officer) changed into a chum of a chum who turned into in India participating on the Snoop Dogg-Singh is King marketing campaign, whilst the duo approached him to help out with sales and he become enthusiastic about the concept so he came onboard. “At across the same time, we also realised that the Indian public turned into now not just inquisitive about Bollywood, consistent with se. It bled onto different elements of tinsel city – they desired to know who became sporting what, what developments had been cool, and in which the good people went to hang around,” he provides. In different words, fashion and way of life.
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But the MissMalini crew knew to check out the product before you make a decision. So it was almost a complete 12 months later that “they took the plunge” in Nowshad’s words and included the employer – MissMalini Publishing Private Limited. “At the time, we had been nevertheless a crew of four-5 humans. And have been looking to get a few seed cash – to generate revenue which will grow the blog. This became around October 2011.”
Sonny Caberwal, who is also a key guide and investor in MM got here on board with Google Asia and India Head Rajan Anandan, Steven Lurie, Sid Talwar who is a Partner at Lightbox Ventures among others, and the corporation secured seed and angel investment in March 2012 – becoming as Nowshad puts it, “a right business.”
What Happened Next
“The following couple of years have been essentially about figuring out what we're,” says Nowshad. When caused to problematic he states, “With the primary bit of money we were given, we did what each person does, went on a hiring spree – bloggers for both Bollywood and style content material. And we finally determined to redesign the website, which, till that point have been designed by Malini learning WordPress and figuring out how to personalize it by going to numerous WordPress forums and inquiring for assist. It was a one-character show in the truest experience of the word.”
The website revamp was outsourced through Elance to some other small outfit in Goa as the crew had no expertise in tech – a big hurdle for any tech-based totally organization. The way Nowshad places it, the outsourced group optimised the website, cleaned up the junk and made it presentable. “But it turned into Kunal Anand, who went directly to observed Kulture Shop, who's a chum of Mike’s who got here up with the first original design for MM,” he recounts. “The fact is, it took us a complete 12 months to just get those tech specs proper. Coming from a simply content, and management driven area, this was a mission for us, even as hitting numbers wasn’t.”
According to Nowshad, the web page turned into doing 150K in particular traffic on average, at that factor of time, and advertiser interest did no longer wane.
Another key moment that decided the direction of MM became the decision to now not re-emblem the enterprise, a common prevalence in startups while seeking to establish PMF and after receiving preliminary investment.
“Most organizations are tied to a brand and no longer a unmarried individual. But we sat down and analysed what MissMalini way and what would occur if we did build the enterprise around her. And we realised that in the domains of social media and content advertising, having a unmarried voice, a single identity labored. MissMalini loves Bollywood, she fiercely grooves to Arijit Singh but at the identical time, is at home in some other international arena. She is a modern-day millennial lady who crosses boundaries with ease – Indian and worldwide. And she had to be one persona, representative of a larger audience by lending her voice and authority to the logo, at the same time as at the equal creating a business that would run on its personal.”
The Scoop That Changed It All
nowshad-rizwanullahAs according to Nowshad, 2013-2014, were no longer “very interesting years” in phrases of storytelling. Although, the group did explode onto the scene with the Ranbir Kapoor-Katrina Kaif mystery experience in Ibiza. A scoop that they occurred to come through, quite by means of twist of fate. “A pal of mine from undergraduate days, spotted those two celebrities collectively and despatched Malini a photograph saying, do you realize these humans? They look acquainted. And that became that.” The reason the inside track worked was because it legitimised MissMalini because the ultimate insider, the first source for enjoyment and lifestyle gossip. And in a 24-hour news and social media cycle, reaching first-mover repute sealed the deal.
“We started out building the business in earnest from then on – scale being our focus. Scale in phrases of site visitors, content, and advertisers,” stocks Nowshad. “With Mike’s knowledge in leveraging each enjoyment and advertising, we had been probable the primary employer in India to fully offer native layout advertising to brands – something we nevertheless do until today.”
The employer had its fair proportion of troubles round this time – one of the important ones was the Google penalties incurred herein. “Before SEO replace ‘Panda’ became delivered by Google, digital publishers should simply copy paste the equal content over and over once more, to growth the number of pages, each from their website and others’ – and sport the prevailing ‘seek’ machine in their favour. Once Panda become initiated to weed out fraudulent websites, this became a close to impossibility and we had been unluckily stuck within the crossfire of every other website the use of our content on their web page and by means of the web page structural troubles that ended up growing reproduction content material within the MM web page.”
Nowshad well-knownshows that the website took a 40% hit on traffic for this alleged infraction. “And it took us approximately six-8 months to get over this blow.” This become the cause, in step with Nowshad, that the unique traffic’ visitors graph turned into skewed, displaying only a jump to 600K in March 2013 and then 800K in March 2014.
But as he stresses, the crew’s first USP and recognition has continually been high-quality content – be it Bollywood, lifestyle or masking the modern day pink carpet event.
“Our branding strategy is usually touchy and respectful of our readers. We recognize they arrive to us for our content and we honour that. So, in the early days, we determined to do a number of co-branding – be it as a life-style companion, running a blog associate and so on. And ensured that the money raised didn’t run out while staying real to the ethos of Malini.”
MissMalini became part of several social media campaigns and events for main brands and this carefully thought out method of balancing among offering consumable content that the target audience enjoys as opposed to what will induce them to click on at the ‘purchase’ button changed into what brought about the employer turning into profitable via the end of 2014 – with each ends of the business, the weblog and social media doing reasonably nicely.
Working Backwards – From Digital to TV To Radio
missmalini4“Our commercial enterprise approach is straightforward – we want to create wonderful content for Indian millennials, distribute this content on each unmarried platform that our target audience is on and ultimately, monetise the brand smartly,” says Nowshad. They do that by allowing a positive percent of branded content material on the platform, with the criteria being that it have to be ‘seamless, non-invasive’ and types that the crew believes in.
And as of nowadays, the group can declare production houses, TV channels, FMCG brands and greater on its purchaser roster.
“For instance, we do now not recommend skin lightening lotions, as it is some thing we are completely towards. And, never say by no means, but we don’t see ourselves working with a cement organization,” he shares with a smile.
It is with this precise ideology, that of speakme to their audience throughout structures, that Malini entered traditional domains inclusive of TV and radio programming. “When we first thought of launching a TV display, we once more looked for homegrown content that would appeal to the Indian millennial, and in the generation of saas-bahu serials and truth TV suggests, the niche vacuum become ripe for being crammed. And it changed into a chunk simple, the initial idea – why now not have a camera group observe our content creators round even as they went to a film premier or frolicked at Fashion Week?” he confesses.
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The idea, simple though it may be, generated sponsors of its own – Myntra, Maybelline and BBlunt and the show ‘MissMalini’s World’ and was released on TLC. The first season had thirteen episodes, and the second one in 2015, following a comparable layout, known as Vero Moda, Saavn, and HTC as emblem sponsors.
He says,
“In traditional manufacturing houses, it's miles the media shopping for businesses that discover sponsors once the display creators create commissioned content. But due to how ubiquitous MM had emerge as by the point, we entered the distance, we had our manufacturers come on board when we requested them to and do the requisite for us, in essence becoming both production house and media customer for the channel.” missmalini3
Around September 2015, Zoom TV too approached the team, with a
rebranding proposition. “We did 26 -3 minute vignettes on fashion, way of life and celebrities for the channel and that become our 2d essential TV show,” he provides. Malini also varied into radio with a display on Saavn in September 2016, and has the identical format –a team follows and breaks down the preliminary content creators while they cowl occasions and people for the internet site.
Creating Content For Indian Millennials Across Platforms
For a employer that became in the main and nonetheless is largely on line, the lateral decision to move to TV desires explaining.
He defends the pass via saying, “India is a completely precise pop culture. Both due to the massive attain TV has even now, in terms of media share. But the Indian TV target market has developed now as millennials have end up hipper, cooler and their thinking has developed faster than they did in the US. Their expectancies are converting and evolving so fast it's far hard to maintain up with them. So we realised that while digital certainly is in which the destiny is, the actual opportunity lies in taking pictures Indian millennials on the content atmosphere, and that, in India, consists of TV.”
On the day we interviewed Nowshad, the advert campaign for Inside Access! With MissMalini debuted on VH1, its 1/3 and largest TV display ever. The display premiered on December 2, 2016. “This show become especially commissioned via the channel and is certainly one of their two flagship suggests for subsequent 12 months,” he says. “But the actual proof of concept came about for us with our branding – of our former sponsors, Maybelline and HTC agreed to come back on board with us once more.”
Perhaps this is also why the organisation has now not long past on to elevate afollow-onn round of funding, as changed into speculated in earlier information reviews.
“We were excited about TV for 2 years and with manufacturers trusting us not just on social media or the internet site, we desired to show the MM use case on new platforms. It took us this long to establish PMF, set up client relationships and ultimately, figure out what is the candy spot that works with our audience.”
As Nowshad places it, whilst it commenced the crew needed to method celebrities and types to associate with them and now the partnership is mutual as requests for content material now flows each methods. “Firstly, due to the fact they have now realised that Malini is the gateway to the Indian millennial, their intended TG, and secondly, because we do now not simply declare to provide a 360-diploma attain to our manufacturers. We are one of the few non-legacy corporations to accomplish that.”
Nowshad mentions the use case of a TVC (television business) that the business enterprise has executed for Imagica – the entertainment park outdoor of Mumbai. “Video is the next massive awareness for us. So we upped our online game and went the mainline course. Let’s see how it will pay out,” he says.
The Road Ahead – Diversification, Expansion, Innovation
Malini has a great consumer base now, with Nowshad claiming 4 Mn precise site visitors in March 2016. But it faces opposition from both legacy advertisers inside the enterprise in addition to from new gamers including Filter Copy, POPxo, Little Black Book, Buzzfeed India, ScoopWhoop, and TVF. All of whom are looking to serve content to the millennials the manner they need to be served, and who've a longtime area of interest wherein they operate from. Little Black Book, Scoopwhoop, and TVF are homegrown players with a conflict chest of their own to perform from, even as Buzzfeed comes with US brand and backing.
So, how does it plan on staying beforehand of the curve?
“Our opposition is with ourselves and the way we entertain the audience,” says Nowshad. “Innovation is hard, because the wishes of the target market are constantly evolving, and it’s a massive ask to maintain up with them. For the relaxation, we are a multi-platform, a brand new media community for Indian millennials and there's sufficient room at the table for us all,” he opines.
But the organization isn't geared up to relaxation on its laurels just but. It has these days launched Bohostar – a purchasing section (in beta mode) at the platform wherein one can create movie star seems, international style traits and more at discounted prices, led by MissMalini’s Chief Strategy Officer and MD, Bohostar, Sujal Shah.
Sujal turned into an early investor in the organisation and worried inside the preliminary heavy lifting inside the first days of dealing with the startup. “Bohostar is his imaginative and prescient and execution, start to finish,” says Nowshard, concerning the new release.
The business enterprise’s future plans include revamping the website for a 3rd time, and expanding the kinds within which it operates – Bollywood, TV, Fashion, Beauty and Lifestyle. “We are also checking out out our Hindi and regional language abilities to include Tier II and Tier III towns now. And then, there is TV and video, where we are trying to increase our talents,” he ends with a modest smile.
For a crew that started out with a self-hosted blog 9 years in the past, the future is full of opportunities.
Editor’s Note
The publishing industry is extremely fragmented. It is likewise undergoing a drastic revolution, in which the target market – which changed into formerly the patron of content material – now becoming a stakeholder in the social communication. Partly, this is because of the penetration of the Internet, smartphones and the appearance of social media in every part of a content customer’s life.
But the principle purpose, content material is changing is because the mind-set of the target audience has evolved. Too speedy. It is one of the key factors for the emergence and established order of content material-technology platforms along with MissMalini, Arre, POPxo, ScoopWhoop and extra. It has, to this point, been capable to break out of the p.C. By means of spreading content and branding throughout media, digital in addition to mainstream.
Its lean enterprise model and proving use instances before accomplishing scale have held it in properly stead. But with extra funded startups investing in tech and scale, will or not it's able to preserve its precise position in the new age media publishing sphere remains to be seen.
