A lot of people want to start their own company and become entrepreneurs. Some do some don't. Those that do face a lot of challenges and have to overcome them before becoming successful. One such story is that of Sportskeeda, a global sports content platform that covers the world's biggest sports and e-sports while serving over 80 million fans every month. Taking a simple sports blogging website and scaling it up to become such a giant media platform is a journey worth knowing.

In this week's talk, Amit and Rinat talk with Porush Jain, founder of Sportskeeda.

Hi everyone, welcome to Tech Talk, a podcast where Amit and I talk about all things tech about all kinds of topics and its impact on our society. Today is a special episode we have a guest here with us. Porush, thank you for joining with us. Porush is the founder of a very popular website called Sportskeeda. It's a website that started as a blog. But a blog, but then expanded into so much more and everything about sports is covered on all kinds of sports in that website. And it has gained popularity over many years now and it is a proper established and well known websites for the fans of Porush has had the initial idea to found it and then also had the journey to bring it from beginning to an established website. Thank you Porush again for joining us today to talk to us. We are actually quite excited to understand your journey and all the challenges that you faced etcetera, etcetera. So, I'll let you introduce yourself Porush to the audience.

Thanks Rinat. Thanks for the great introduction. So I was an ordinary bloke who was what you say, aspirational. My father has always been a businessman and I always wanted to be doing some business when I when I was doing my MBA in 2008/2010 in Bangalore. Then it was like a prime time of startups, like the whole startup culture was kind of coming along in Bangalore and I was you know, aspirational enough to go out and meet a lot of Intrapreneurs in Bangalore, did some internships. And I was like, really inspired. I wanted to do something, and I didn't want to go for a job. So I paid like a worst case scenario for me like I have an Infosys two years I have an MBA. If I just give two years to my startup, you know what, what maximum back can go. So I just paid I said, I have two years for my myself. Let me see if I can do something. And it was, you know, very emotional decision. You can say. It's not that you know, I really really knew that a sports website will become 1000 Crore business that it is right now as in the run rate ARR is around 120 cr valuation is around 1000 crore for now. It was more that, what can I do that time and what space that's not been occupied already. So during 2009 When I started Sportskeeda, we had like a lot of… India is always been a cricket nation and it still is no denying that. There was literally no space for the sports. Even like I'd seen leading websites during that time had a cricket tab they never had an all sports Tab. I said you don't know someone. India is huge. And India always follows the news to be like five to 10 years behind the West that time. I don't say that anymore. I don't think we are. But I took a punt that India will become a multi sport nation soon. and they have to be someone you know, doing a multi sport website for India that someone has to be doing the all multi sport website for India. Someone has to create the all's the biggest sports side in India and since 2009 there was no one trying to do that. There were a few attempts but not I think something that can really become new. So I kind of said okay, this is what I have going to do. I know the initial steps, because I used to create a website for people all the time, like to learn stuff, make some money also. And I said okay, WordPress is a great tool. So I'm coming to the tech now because if you don't hold me I'll just go to the intrapreneurial in the business partner,

That's fine.

Yeah sure…

So I you know, WordPress, I used to be a bit of, I'm not a computer science graduate, but I know PHP, C++ I used to be able to have a few things yet and so I was able to, you know, create a WordPress show it as like a website; there are lot of bloggers in. I had no money I only have aspirations and passion, that time, but I was able to create, like 200 writers who were like just writing for fun. And that was done in like three to five months. You know, the speed of execution was pretty good. And so the whole step earlier was about WordPress plugins, hacking some WordPress plugins, PHP and hacking the front end so that it looks like doesn't look like a blog but looks like a website with a lot of authors, you know, established media brands. Fake it till you make it. That's how it was. A few anecdotes, I used to have like 20 email ids and all were pointing to my…I did all that right…

So people used to feel they have a hockey department, they have a Tennis department, they have this because Porush at the end from behind. But it was fun days. I used to really look at the change the design a lot on the homepage, create new plugins, interactive features, whatever I can do with PHP, WordPress and plugins. A lot of free stuff is there. Thanks to Matt, the founder of WordPress. I really owe him because without WordPress I don't think there would have been a Sportskeeda so yeah, I didn't that was the starting and then huge journey came in and then when I got investors, I got angel investor. Then we got a VC investor in Sportskeeda and a lot of corporate culture came into the company which took me some time to really understand, you know, what is an HR? Everyone knows an HR, we're really running an HR hiring people. It's a nightmare. So on the other side of the table it was a nightmare. so yeah, I've been through a lot of learnings I've been there. It'd be great if you can clue. we can have a transition. I can speak as right now. One hour for every year when I …

so we saw you you got the idea, you started it and then you thought about okay pulling in all the writers and then using WordPress. So WordPress I think Rinat also uses WordPress for his own website. I know a lot of people who use WordPress. WordPress is a great technology. It's completely open source and people can build a lot of websites on that. So then you started the blog. What about hosting and what about the other challenges when it comes and I mean, you decided to set up something like a blog. So you need constant articles. So did you have a schedule in mind? How frequently were you publishing? And because the thing is, attention and latest updates are big things right? So if you don't get regular updates, people start losing interest. So you even if you have 200 pool of writers, you need to constantly get those articles in and get chase people to get those articles out. Plus you're focusing on multiple sports. So that means I'm guessing football is a big thing because people follow English Premier League champions league Formula One is huge. I know when we were in college. We used to follow Formula One quite a lot. And then there are other Indian sports like hockey, kabaddi, badminton, tennis because of other sports people. So how were you trying to get hold of all these sports and all these authors, and then try to publish articles on a regular basis? Because that must be a challenge as well, right?

Yeah. So see, earlier for the first two, three years, we always had like a minimum quality standard that only want to invite really good bloggers or something to contribute people that you want to read them. Apart from that we were really, really open. So if someone wants to write on any random sport, which has, which has an audience, we were like open arms. For them and someone used to mail me that there is no category for frisbee, they will get Don't worry. They will be within 10 minutes. We are open for an article on Facebook. So earlier it was for the first two years it was really not a focused approach. The focus was that we are the we are the largest Indian sports website. We are promoting sports in India. That also kind of changed after two years and anything with good quality English with good information with some insights which is not available on any blog. We were happy to get them. And we're just focusing on how many writers/ active writers can we have. And once we have a even an article on a game of a Frisbee you know the next thing for us was to deliver reads for them. within Bible that writer right again if he's not getting because he always had like a read count on the each article. And I promise to them was you know, if you're getting like 100 reads on your blog, you'll get 1000 here on Sportskeeda because it's a site with a lot of popularity, good SEO and everything. So yeah, first two years, I'll admit there was no focus. But then once we got the VC funding, so that was exactly two years 2011 November is something where we got the funding and then we kind of sat down as it is we cannot just be open to everything. We need to really focus on few sports, which will become like businesses for us and we become popular and then we'll create destination and a lot of people will come there. So we kind of chose football, wrestling and I will tell you why wrestling. Then football, wrestling, cricket obviously if you are in India, all Indian sports was created in one bucket, because the kind of popularity were less. If you look at audience sports you know, Indian athletics like it has its polls during every Olympic or an Asian game but then generally people are not really searching for athletics. So yeah, we focus on the game like we were really big on football earlier. So once we've got funding, then we had like separate teams for the specific sport that we really are focusing on. I hope I've answered

Right I mean, to be honest, I grew up in South Asia in Bangladesh and cricket has always been in that part of the world. Cricket is like a religion. I mean, everyone is so crazy about it. I remember when I was growing up there was one website I used to follow is Cricinfo.com How is that? Is Sportskeeda similar to that kind of website? and is that a competitor of yours? or is that?

definitely we are competing with Cricinfo.com and with all due respect to Cricinfo.com So our cricket department obviously it's a competition with them. We our sales team is always in competition with them like when they're getting advertising orders. So yeah, so I think Cricinfo.com and cricbuzz.com.com.

Okay

So Cricinfo.com started, like; Hats off to Cricinfo.com . They started kind of scoring cricket on internet when even before the browsers. They have huge history. And then, like right now the positioning of Cricinfo.com is kind of like very, it's very desktop oriented. People has really grabbed the mobile era and Sportskeeda and our focus is on the you know, the new generation. We have. We had a Hindi community way back, Hindi section way back more energetic social media kind of commentary we do. So that's like the 2/3, I think you can set a different positioning by simply mobile-centric crick-info very kind of lightest kind of and desktop with the focus on really great they have really good writers. Late mid and Sportskeeda is more social. More. What do you say, Massy…

So this is interesting Porush. I mean, you started the journey and you have all these competitors. Now and you had a blogging idea. Now I'm thinking how do you monetize a blog? Like you got VC funding after two years, just based on okay a lot. Then a good authors, they're writing some good articles and there is a lot of viewership, but then how do you make money from it? Because I mean, Facebook is trying to do the same thing with Facebook posts, Instagram, Twitter, people, people are there, but the have to figure out a way to make money

So Amit, when you do a blog and you get like 10,000 visits a month. Frankly, it won't make much money. Unless it's a very it's a very, very niche subject and we have an affiliate network. It won't make you money, but right now 80 million users a month. And they visit the site multiple times. So when you have that right? and you are able to, you know, become the largest or one of the largest sports site in any specific geo then you can have a sales team you can go out, Talk to advertisers. You know obviously when we spoke about sports site; Nike, Adidas come to mind directly. So we have gone there and we have got a lot of business from them. Then even your How do you blow monetize and blog directly in AdSense comes to the mind you're struggling with AdSense? So that's the level of one of monetization and that's automatic, like programmatic monetization. We are not selling the ads. Google is selling the ads but they're giving you a proportion of the revenue because the ad was displayed on your site. On your blog. Right. So that is level one of monetization. When you start getting a lot of traffic on your website or a lot of audience on your website, then you start moving up, you start having your own ad server. Then you start selling programmatic and direct. Then in programmatic apart from only Google, there are different other ad networks or our TVs, many technologies are there a lot get into ad tech right now. But then there's a whole ad stack that comes into place. So, right now, when single when you open Sportskeeda ad is displayed. So there is real time bidding on 20 Different bidders, like Google, PubMatic, Aronson so many other different bidders are there. And they have cookies right? So they know that okay, this came from someone who likes this and this It came from UK and everything. And there will be twenty different bidders bidding for that space and the highest bidder will get that will display that Ad, we'll build him right so real time bidding is a huge ad-technology a lot of other any Ad-run media site runs on that. And it's not bad business. Last year we did 120 crore on Sportskeeda. On annual about 120cr. 97/98% of that is advertising based.

Okay, so you're like Google, so they give everything out for free. But most of their revenue comes from AD. Not as big as Google but I'm just talking about from the revenue side model, the model. So another question I wanted to ask is like, initially, you started with a desktop website. So over a period of time, you would have seen that a lot of youngsters are now even in college. We started getting phones. iPhone was launched in 2007. So and your site was launched in 2009 2011 you got the ventures.

Yeah, I saw the transition and it was very fast. When I launched the site in 2009. I remember there was a time when 70 to 80% Traction was from desktop. To this time where 85 to 90% is mobile. Yes. So I've seen the whole transition very fast.

So and when did you take the decision like okay, you should now shift to mobile?

Actually, I'll admit I was late. Cricbuzz.com was really the new the trend and then you said the first best, I think cricket app on the Play Store and I think Play Store launched in 2006/2007. I think the best cricket app was Cricbuzz.com and they are still been there. It’s 2023 You know, it's still the best Cricket App. And that's why they've captured the market. Sportskeeda We launched a mobile app our website became mobile friendly by 2012/2013. Before that itself was mobile friendly, but really, really mobile friendly by 2012 and 2014 we launched our app but we were late. It's kind of I think the cricket market is like one the leader kind of takes the biggest pie very easily.

But I think being a new site, does app have a value like I have I read BBC here in the UK.

Yes, You are right. News if only a new site wants to make the app popular, it's very difficult. Few aggregators have been popular on mobile app. Aggregators still work. But for a sporting side it's about the scores. So for a cricket score, people do have an app.

Yeah, I think mobile apps are good for like trying to get an information very quickly. I mean, if you want to get the same information, you have to go sit on the desktop and go to your website, Google. But on my app, and I think I also started using the mobile banking app a lot more when I just needed to see my balance maybe a lot of the times the actual banking operation was not the important part, but it's just fingerprint and one second I'm inside and that kind of benefit, I think, is something that's you know, anyone needs to look into when they're trying to convert in from desktop to app. So obviously this, The journey only started from 2009 to 2011. And then, you know, there's a long way to go, you know, he started getting the VC funding and you know, everything started expanding Everything started from one person to sort of become scale up really quickly. And there are two aspects of it. One is from the business side, how did you manage the expansion from off hiring people of maybe taking an office and all of that and also from the tech point of view, rather than having just one WordPress with one admin login, you know, you had to then give out admin?

Yeah, I think, you know, as, you became popular, and I think the biggest spike came from Facebook in 2012. So our strategy of creating Facebook page, different Facebook pages for different Sports, kinds of really blog. And I can actually say, you know, we were one of the first media companies to really leverage Facebook and then everything just caught on. So we had a huge spike in 2012, specifically, and our front end started breaking because WordPress when it loads a page, it starts loading lot of plugins, and it's not what do you say it's not made for millions of pages. So the first thing what we did until 2012 we can take the I think the CTO was a friend of mine, he used to help me out here and there but once you got funding, I got him as a full time CTO. And the first thing he did was he removed access from my BI server that I used to also change the code sometimes here and there and I was sloppy, obviously. Right. So the first data the first removed access, my access and he transitioned to an AWS server. Then the first thing that we did was to change the front end to a custom layer. So the back end, the CMS was still WordPress for the 2012/2013, I think. And the whole front end was our own custom layer, which was like a CDN Back high Page Speed. Very minimum operations, you know minimum operations to the DB. And it was lightning fast. And I used to remember that really helped us in SEO also. So we are so that was the first step. So we have transition in these 13 years from starting on WordPress to a custom, media CMS, the back end front end and a lot of other applications that we have built. So we actually were also decided, like thinking 2 years that that we can get into another business of using our CMS to a media site. But then we thought, you know, it's a very sporty, it's very custom made CMS for sports sites, and we'll end up not creating our own competition. So we didn't want to really do that. So we kind of focus on the media business. But right now Sportskeeda is one of the few media companies. Not more than 5% big media houses like Sportskeeda, have their own custom CMS or huge tech team. So tech has really, really helped, Sportskeeda you know, achieve what it has achieved. So first of all, obviously the front end. And then we saw that there are a lot of bottlenecks because we were a multi authored side. Like I think by 2013 We were publishing around 200 articles a day. And we already had like, I think 100 different writers, logged in 30 different editors, logged in and WordPress does support multi author, but then it was sloppy at that time and we really wanted something very fast and efficient. We really wanted to bake in SEO. So we started working on the back end itself and the whole CMS kind of one by one, like one screen by one screen. We started changing the whole backend itself. So it took a I think four or five years for us to completely replace everything from WordPress and back to the 2014/2015 We were all custom code.

All right Wow. That's quite interesting because yeah, I have used WordPress to build I mean, obviously I don't have anywhere near the footfall that you have but I never kind of thought about that how you would go to like a corporate structure from an IT standpoint or from just a WordPress situation because I thought WordPress was really good. I mean, he has

I think I'd say that Sportskeeda was not built in a day. And that's how we did it. over the five years, plugin by plugin. We kind of changed in move out of WordPress. I think few of our DB(data base) files still there might be the name it could be wp_something.

So I want you to ask Porush like, I mean, you change the tech stack, but I mean, as you as you progress in sports there are these spike moments like when there is a World Cup when there is say Olympics, so there is a spike where a lot of traffic is suddenly coming to your website. So how do you test those situation? Because the reason I'm asking this question is because in my company we faced this during Black Friday event, so

So I will, As we frank Sportskeeda used to Break Down. I think the Last breakdown we had was 2016 Olympics when we won a bronze medal or a Gold Medal. In Olympics we won a gold medal right? in badminton?

I know it.

I am so sorry that I was forgot that. But yeah 2016 Olympics was the last time we kind of crashed. And I think still till then our Tech team really became smart. They were able to dynamically add a lot of servers are all the code is really air-tight. We are able to manage a lot of spikes. So we don't have that right number. But we have managed at least I think 500k concurrent users on our cricket sports, half a million concurrent users in cricket scores. In cricket scores are like, updated like every second, even before second. So doing that for half a million users takes a period of but then we were able to do that. So yeah, Tech has really advanced in that. So will have to scale your tech, really believe in the coders. You know, give them time and if your tech team you know, craft acting, they will obviously you know, deliver it.

I think This is actually a very important part to look at. I think any startup business at that time. And even now when it comes to the initial success, and they want to scale up, they really have to you really have to think about getting help from technology. You really have to know what the latest tech is and how to utilise it best. And that's what really helps you to sort of scale up your business to

It needs a lot of leadership skills also because in the end techies are human right. So we have a really great tech team. So I remember you know

I'll give you a few stories actually, So Sankalp Sharma who is the current CTO. He was a good friend of mine used to make to things for me and I was after him leave TCS and joined some startup you know, make, make some good money makes and make a history. So I was able to convince him to join us in 2015. And the first day he joined it he didn’t joined as CTO he joined as senior developer. But he soon became the CTO by enthusiast. And the first day he joined, the site crashed. and he was like the most senior developer that time. You know startup small tech team. Then he was like trying to revive the website from the black hole. Where is the server?What is the code?

What do you know on first day? He was able to do that.. So I think 15/16 days took to know. There were a lot of times we used to go down and I remember the only thing I was able to touch Sankalp’s house at midnight at midnight, and I'll order a pizza for him and that's the best I can do and now I'm watching you revive the website…

Wow! That is a interesting story on the very first day I mean, I've started in many jobs and the first day you have no idea you don't even know. you know, where your email login is I think but

if you want to very good employees you know through them in the fire.

It’s like swimming right? If you want to learn swimming just through them on the water. Anyways So, Porush, one of the things that you mentioned is that you move to AWS. AWS is very popular a lot of companies that host their solutions on AWS. But a lot of times what people fail to understand is that maintaining AWS takes a lot of time and effort. But the cost also scales up. So as you scale up the servers as you scale up the tech stack and everything because of your load that you're expecting, your cost also starts spiking up. So you said that you have optimized the website after 2016 your website didn't crash, but then what happened to the cost like how were you able to control the cost side of things because then the cost might be also shooting up as the technology

Yeah, what I see over the last 12/13 years right? it's been very constant that are our production increases, right, our efficiency of monetization also increases and the server cost also increases but whatever I've seen ever is the mostly the server cost is like 1% to 2% of our total revenue of the company.

Okay.

Maybe at max it’s payment starts at 3% I used to call the tech team as in this is not done. I used to calculate as a percentage of the total revenue of the company and if it's in % to % raise, I don't think so. I think right now Sportskeeda It's a 20 lakhs or what do you say one to two crore server bill every year, and I told you right 120cr what we make. So it's still in that range. So it still never is to hurt me yet

Okay, interesting.

And there, there were spikes in between in some wrong configuration and, you know, one month let the average. Average billing is by less than one month of 10/15 lakhs and then the whole Tech Team would have been called up………

So, another thing is that you were the founder and you were the CEO for a very long time you were running the company. So you had to get the money into run the business, but you also had to decide the strategy where the product is heading towards. So like, were there any points of time where you thought that okay, this may not work and we will not break even, or we have to shut down the company. And then if that didn't happen, then what are the like product strategies that you did?

Circumstances are always used to tell me like this is not working and maybe the company won't work? I never said that from my heart. From my side, I will not let this go down. I will not let this company fail. So there were at least three or four instances when situations are very tough. But yeah, so from myself, I'll be there for someone throws me out…

But the product strategy like okay, you started in the blog site now there are a lot of sports people.

Yeah, I will be frank you know, I always focused more on the tech and product more than I should have done. I'm not saying that I've not done a lot of focus on content. But the first instance when this situation came where you see things look very sad 2013 I guess November, during our marriage actually. So what we were trying to do, we were just focusing on a lot of tech product design and the third unit that is something which is gonna bring a lot of audience but frankly, our content strategy was out of place. And I understood you know that now,2/3 years there's no money so what I did is actually just, you know, cut myself off from tech. And I said that you know? Let me get the sales strategy and content strategy right. And also bring down the expenses. Like we are and we have, like, we were like burning 15 lakhs a month and we had like 50 lakhs in the bank. So three months right? So kind of brought the cost down, increase the revenue, the boundary between five lakhs, after four months before we begin actually profitable. So you know, it's right to focus on the right. domains at the right time. So content strategy was a huge focus for me, then on and from 2013, 2014,2015 to kind of 100% year on year. That was a great time for us. And it was largely on the content strategy backed by the tech. So if you have to build a media company, right, it has to be content, backed by tech and I was kind of doing it before 2013 tech back by content that doesn’t work. As in tech first cannot work in a media company.

Nice nice. I mean, obviously, you've left the company now but it I wonder for a company which is which started largely on written content. I wonder what the landscape would be now. Now that we have AI solutions, which writes various contents a lot more quicker than humans. What should be I mean, if say, for example, if you were to start another company, now, how would you take into account this, the technology that we currently have available to everyone in terms of the content scenario?

Pretty good question. I don't think I have the answer. Really. I know for a fact that we spend a lot of money on editing Sportskeeda. I know for a fact that, that can be near zero editing can be really AI assisted, Google has categorically said that they will not allow publishers to publish AI generated content. And I have been a bit of product patch. I don't know how good Google is right now, in detecting AI content because there are a lot of media companies creating AI content. And I'm sure a lot of Sportskeeda writers must be in the backend using AI to improve their content. So it is very murky waters right now, I think for the publishing industry. Because controlling AI tool is difficult. I don't think we will, can understand which are… it's my personal opinion. I don't think Google can understand which content is AI written or which is not. Obviously, I don't see a complex. Like there might be specific cases but not all Media companies can just go AI content creator because you will need human supervision. AI is not updated on every second basis on real time updates are happening right? AI is not converting. Maybe they are but I don't think AI is crunching best on understanding what's happening with massy on the real time basis or what will happen to them. So I think it's still far but the landscape change like everything in the next five years for media companies, I'm sure and Sportskeeda is already working a lot on AI how to improve their processes.

This is certainly an interesting take because I actually totally agree with you. I don't think Google at the moment can 100% detect with like absolute certainty that this is the AI and this is not AI. And also I'm also side with AI to use it as a tool. It's not a bad thing to get help from AI and then improving your own content. After once you had it edited for grammatical mistakes or spelling mistakes or you know, just overall editing. But then as long as you have your original content and original ideas about writing about this particular topic, which is niche and you know, something, maybe a problem the writer has faced in their own lives and that's an original, you know, idea and then you use AI as a tool. To make it better, make it more pleasurable.

And one main point I think, a media company as large as Sportskeeda cannot go wrong. So he would say that Sportskeeda have written some wrong information that we have published. There's an average article on Sportskeeda you get like 15000-20000 reads. This is an average. Then there will articles with millions of Reads. And Sportskeeda if we start erroring then how are we different from any other company? Yeah, and what I've seen is that AI does make a lot of mistakes right now. approximate just says something which doesn't have any background at all. So that is the biggest different. I think right now that any writer can just you know, copy from an AI generated article he will loos his job as well.

Exactly, yeah, it's just not viable to just completely do a copy paste and also, people add a lot of the times don't always understand that this is a generative algorithm so it doesn't understand what it's writing. It's just, you know, taking right you know, patterns from millions and millions of articles and then spitting out something that is a combination of everything, but it's not understanding the current situation or the context and what should be in the I've

it has no scale in the game

Yeah, there is many, many limitations and I think those are where humans can shine. And again, you know, the question that we've been asking for many years now you know how, you know, you're probably a really good person to ask, did AI take away any jobs or Automation take away any jobs as you were scaling up? And I think, you know, you had to probably hire different skills, skilled people. Then

So I would say AI, not really AI. We always like admit it now. I used to really look what I can automate tomorrow. You know, reduce the headcount.

Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, do

Do you ever get the headcount low? That's the question.

many times

Many times? Okay.

Still Sportskeeda, I think, I don't know the exact head to go down left. It was 120. I think it's still at that number. It's, we are pretty good as new in the per capita income per employee, and it's pretty good for us. So we are pretty lean team actually

Yes, but what I want to still look at the other side is as you have reduced your workload or automated a lot of stuff and you didn't need that particular skill anymore, but you have expanded as a company from one person to 10 person to 120. So overall, newer, skilled jobs were in fact created. That's why you have a bigger team than a 10 person team, right? With the help of.

Yeah Definitely. For us. There is a huge team we have. We have 20 people in engineering-end product. Then a lot of our content; see first Sportskeeda. Each sport is a business. So there's a football business head, Cricket business head, There is a wrestling business head. And now we also do a lot of video content on Snapchat, on YouTube everywhere right? There are video teams. And so how we have created most of the people in content are managers as they had the P&L responsibility, so the cricket business head has a P&L responsibility for cricket, cricket scores business head cricket content business head, Video business head, and those cricket business heads will also have producers and you know, and they basically engage a lot of content writers or content creators. And, you know, make some of that operations. So we don't hire a lot of writers or content creators. But then, I think we have at least 1000 people on a monthly basis on a contract on Sportskeeda. They are not full time but there are no contract.

So I mean, Is it similar to like a business trying to promote something Say I'm Nike, I want to promote, promote my new shoe and hire content creators and ask them to post on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok. Is it something similar?

not similar. What you are talking that is about marketing. You are marketing something.

marketing, but using content to market with influences. Yes.

For Sportskeeda, we are not marketing anything. What we are doing is creating the best content at that moment. Like let's say Ashes is going on. Yes. So we are creating the best cricket scorecards best blogs, best opinion pieces, fastest news and we are competing with other media companies that instead of consuming the content they are they can consume it here. So can we be best and the fastest. So we are not. We are considered a marketing content, but we are not selling anything. It's very different.

Very different. Okay. So another thing is that, I mean, you started as a blog site now more, you're more of a news site, and there are so many other platforms. So you're fighting for eyeballs like people should come to your website to read this particular event about, say Tour de France. Formula One. Recently, the British Grand Prix Wimbledon is happening. So they should come to your website. So how do you how do you differentiate it? Is it just the writing that's helping you or is it some other things because I've followed Sportskeeda journey, and I've seen that you have also interviewed sports people, you have sponsored events, and you have like, interviewed …

So you can understand it like this way, a media company can get more eyeballs either through distribution or through destination. For distribution, I will get to the destination later. Distribution is when your article lands on top of Google. Right? or your social media articles are going viral, or you are integrated with OEMs on the minus on screen. Right? So that's distribution where if your SEO is better, your social media technologies, skills are better or your relations with OEMs are better helps you get the traction. The content quality is the second step. Right? Or funding quality obviously needs to be great only then we'll have we will do well on Google, On social media or you will have partnerships. So that is a distribution. And Sportskeeda did really really well. second is the destination where you're marketing yourself as the destination for sports content users are searching your name and coming for Sportskeeda. Right? So we were able to do both very well. Distribution really, really well. Destination, I think not as great as a cricbuzz.com.com or cricinfo.com but we have our own pockets during the Olympics are fraction are far higher than we did a great job in marketing that the best coverage of Olympics is on Sportskeeda. So the user can go on Google or Facebook or anywhere but he's actually searching for sports that have content to come and so that becomes a destination. Right?

That that's very interesting way of looking at it. It's two way One is you're reaching out and one is they're reaching out to your content. So in terms of marketing, I mean when you have become such a big user base or big sort of how does it change from you know, marketing so you know, the as you said the distribution bid was in a probably the first thing to do like when people didn't know about Sportskeeda and you had to distribute your content everywhere. So now I think it's more powerful destination site because everyone knows and you know you have a like a repeat visitors etc. So how do how did you change your marketing strategy based on this change because now you don't have to market for the website.

So Rinat we are expanding business. Right. And there are pockets of Sportskeeda Contents, which are now our destination and we don't need to market them. But there are lot of pockets of SportsKeeda content which are newer and we are looking at distribution. So we started our NFL our NBA content few years back only, for them we need to do all the marketing that we can.

Of course yeah, so those ones where you're sort of new in the game, of course that needs marketing but you know, to give an example Coca Cola or Pepsi everyone knows about them. They don't need to do marketing, but they still do. Why is it that you think that you don't need to do marketing even on the established one because…

No, no. I was trying to simplify. We definitely need to do marketing. We can't just, you know, obviously became less active or less competent enough and then someone else can back you.

slowly forget. it's an amnesia very quickly.

You have to innovate the product. Make sure that the audiences that came last time, stick to you, and you also make sure that you've come up with new ways in getting new audiences to consume your content. And experience your content or many new features. I gave you example right? That we introduce Hindi. You always need to do an experiment and for me you know………Basically fail fast, fail to fail fast. Try a lot of stuff if you fail don’t worry. That's what we used to be here.

You learn something in the process right? So it’s good. So Porush I mean with your journey as a sports website in India. Did you ever have the ambition of like reaching out in other geographies like outside India?

So yeah, I forgot to tell you about that. And that was a wrestling story. Okay. So what happened? I think 2012/2013 as I told you we are always inviting someone wanted to write about wrestling and we said why not? Let's write about and next year we saw our revenue and of July 20% And there was one article which contributed 20%-30%. And we saw, okay, the wrestling article, got lot of traffic from U.S, and the revenue per ad impression is 20 to 30 times higher than what we're seeing in India. Yes. Right. Because see the ad revenue rates that you get is based on the per capita income of the country.

Yes, I know YouTube has the same algorithm. So if you have more eyeballs from India, you will get less money. But if you have more eyeballs from us, you'll get more money.

Yeah, So the next day is called that writer that hi, how are you? Have more articles? And the we started focusing on wrestling. And we actually are the best wrestling content site from at least seven eight years. So and Indian company Actually the best wrestling content website in U.S. And a huge pillar for our revenue, actually currently 70% traction is Indian, our revenue is 70% from U.S.

Wow! That is very interesting how one small factor can make such a big difference in terms of algorithm and stuff like that. So would you know, I mean, I think obviously, you know, then with the wrestling article, that was one event that really pushed you towards it, but now are you looking at what other events which are popular in Western countries and where there is a gap?

So, see we kind of really polished up the book of how to create a business unit, a content business unit largely on the wrestling content side. So it's something that is doing really, really well a team of three I think, makes like 30% of sports revenue. Isn't that content business? Not 30 was nothing. It's not that it was now earlier. It was. So we replicated that whole playbook when we started as I said, NFL MLB so Sportskeeda has on those teams, we replicate our success in wrestling in other sports in America in us.

Nice, nice. Okay.

And Porush another thing is that, I mean, as you as you were progressing through your journey, you have all these events that you're sponsoring and you're also active on social media channels, etc. So what was your social media strategy because you're publishing the content on your main website sportskeeda.com. Then you are trying to publish that same content and trying to advertise it through Facebook, through Instagram, through YouTube, maybe so and I did see that you did a YouTube podcast series as well interviewing a lot of athletes. So that was the kind of thing so but how are you trying to? Because a lot of times, I mean, we have been creating podcasts for a while now and we are trying to figure out like okay, create content once, but use it in multiple formats at different locations. So what was your strategy of like having one article on your website, and then using that article, to market it everywhere so that people come to you for consuming that content?

Yes, I think I've really thought about this a lot. Earlier I used to focus on only our website, but I think you know, broader way of or the better way of thinking it and the current thought I have right now and use it for several years. Is that you are a content producer. Right? And you are a brand. Sportskeeda is a content brand, which produces a specific type of content. And we want and we are a media company want to make money out of that content. Right? You should really focus there, that content really works. And it makes money and audiences for you. Right? It doesn't really matter if it's only on your site. So I really wasted a lot of years, getting a video player and only publishing videos on Sportskeeda. I will not put on YouTube because it's not as doesn't make any sense. You are getting traction if you're getting traction on Snapchat on Reels, on Instagram, you know, wherever you are getting traction and you're building audience for your content. Go ahead and publish it. And I don't think even a monetization should come second. So I will tell is one concept that I have for a content business and you are also into that now if you want to monetize ever actually get traction. There are three steps to content business. First is your content quality and the content so I know that I have a niche, a great content and I have a lot of content which is unique and no one else has that. That is step one. Second is traction. and third is monetization. And everyone has to go through these three steps. You know, you can't think of monetization before the content or traction before the content or monetization before traction. Right? So a lot of times as Instagram never had monetization now they have Yes, it is a huge platform. Let us publish it for free let us create millions of users when one, maybe one day we are able to monetize. So as a content producer, you should always think in these three steps. Is my content great? Second, where am I getting traction? And third is that okay, now I'm getting traction. can how can I monetize it? We should not confuse any of the three.

It should be in right order in this order. You can't monetize when you don't have people to consume your content.

And sometimes you will not monetize. So internet isn't good. It is very difficult to monetize. Right so but it's still building your audience. Because of your Twitter you might get your YouTube video viral one night.

And another thing now, I wanted to focus on is COVID. So During COVID lot of sports. events were cancelled. So how were you coping? During that situation? Because you are still the CEO running.

Actually, Yeah. That really helped. Frankly, it helped. I think 2009 17-20 kind of not really growing at a huge pace. Because we have taken a lot of projects which we were trying we will not which are not the core competency of the company, but we are trying to bring new features new products and we are kind of not really focusing on the core competency. Covid came and then there was the news that you know, for the next six months or maybe a year you will not have any sporting action. It was very disheartening for a sports content. Right? And we said okay, tough times. We need to have tough majors and we actually kind of shut down everything which was not a core competency for us. Which we news might not work and we can experiment. If we really want to do the experiment, we can do it. So that kind of helped us focus on our core competency and even the playbook that we had, you know, we were able to like because we had a lot of time at our home. So we were able to create the labels in what works, what doesn't work on Sportskeeda. And you know, sometimes these incidents on a company actually help. So this happened in 2013. I kind of mentioned that, you know, when things were tough and I had to cut down the company a bit at the year 2013. But this also helped because, you know, we were able to focus on the core competency. So Sportskeeda revenue kind of became like for few months and became 30 percent of what it was on a average monthly basis. And then in the next six months, it was twice of what our average was.

so what changed? I mean, of course, you said that it was good for the company, you were focusing more, but sporting events were still not happening. So what changed, were you trying to market your existing content more because you are not able to get new content. So

I think a few one was that because we're focusing only on core competency. We were actually able to produce and automate a lot of stuff. Again, produce better content at a faster rate. Second, even the consumption because everyone was at home right? Consumption also was internet consumption increased. Right? Everyone knows most of many media companies that we saw jump, but our Jump was even higher because we were producing even far better content with the higher speed because we said okay, let us you know dismantle everything which is not really core Sportskeeda and just focus on our PlayBook that we have.

And I think our writer also become more efficient with Office. We became a remote company, like, right and all we had to do is we obviously trusted them but now the relationship was more that particular needs this and this is your salary. And a lot of what do you say, Talks and everything went off because we were remote. So in that way though, it's cool, but I think it really helped the employer relationship with Sportskeeda in that way I feel.

So now are you moving back to like your

No, so. So because COVID And after the COVID we actually started the Sportskeeda revenue increase 100% year on year for the last three years actually. So the remote culture suits us like anything. We actually are a remote company now. So we have like four people CXO level people they do or meet in the office but it's not compulsory for anyone comes in. Unless it's a annual meeting or something we want someone like the team wants to come to Bangalore and meet them. Now we don't even ask. That person is

perfect. Yeah, that is that is the future actually I've heard this from many other leaders in their industry that yeah, it just suits so much better. And this could also,

Yeah, I think I just wanted to mention WordPress is owned by automatic and automatic itself is remote first. It is completely remote only organization. So yeah, it is quite fascinating. GitLab is completely remote.

Yeah actually our tech team always wanted like our CTO always asking earlier also before COVID That let's try remote. And I said I cannot do that because other team other teams, you know: content, marketing, sales. I can’t just bring everyone remote. May be Tech might work remote. But now that's a huge revolution is remote.

Wow! that is that is that is a good sort of insight to hear from you in terms of this work culture. And now obviously the relationship is more of an output based rather than time based. We don't care where you are and how much time but we just need this output as long as that is there. That's a lot more sort of honest sort of interaction rather than before it was and this is what a lot of offices are also a lot of companies are saying as well that

You know? actually, I learned it the hard days and then we had an office, we had an HR, we hire people and I was young, right? and then we got funding I was like 25 on the first funding in 2011. I used to really work hard on each and every hire. Like really take a lot of interviews higher than this person, meet human in person a lot. You know, telling about Sportskeeda. I used to get emotional with that person. And it was not good because not healthy because then I'll maybe sometimes I'll micromanage you know, if he's leaving for a better opportunity. I get emotional again. And then the hard way I learned it isn't doesn't matter, you know? So I am doing all this for profit, right? Obviously the simple promote sports in India and there is things that are altruistic but in the end it is still a business as a for profit company. And that person is also working for profit even if he's giving getting no profits somewhere else. He doesn't have an emotional connection to the company. He should for the work. One should tell about your work lot, skills and your work. But in the end it's a commercial agreement. So I think it took me few years for learning that and I think after four or five years a few of our employees were emotionally connected, and they used to say Porush, I think I've got a better opportunity. I say okay. They will shock only. that's it

yeah, I think I think you become detached over a period of time. When you're young, you're emotional. But as you as you gain experience, you see that okay, this is part of life, people will come and go, the company should work. So, Porush, One question for me is regarding live streaming. Did Sportskeeda ever think about live streaming any Sports event? and did you actually do it?

We didn’t wanted to but there is like small experiments. Live Streaming was an ambitious project that I wanted. I was exploring a different business altogether. It is an expensive business. So something really which matters that gets a lot of eyeballs in India. It is very costly. Rights from the BCCI.

But that just cricket. I mean, you can do live streaming of say badminton or say wrestling.

We can but then monetizing the news altogether a very different ballgame. And then the setup cost is still the same. Right? Now streaming is really sold, I think because there are already players but I think in 16, 17,18 When I was trying still it was pretty expensive and to get the whole business making sense. It didn't workout for me and then we're always different business priorities.

Okay. And then from a news platform, I mean was the focus ever on selling merchandise Sportskeeda branded merchandise and other stuff as well because that's how you create a brand and Sportskeeda the word itself means you are crazy about sports. So if your fans ever think about like monetising that part as well.

Frankly I don’t think we became a brand at that scale that people will buy that much merchandise maybe for Olympic coverages a few niches that we have created and people love us for that. But I don't think even cricinfo.com or cricbuzz.com sells for own merchandise. We did try selling football T shirts, Cricket T-shirts and designed t shirt in 2014. But then I understood even at a 20 lakh per month sell though profit were very very minimal. At that time. The Indian customers were very demanding cod (Cash on Delivery) and everything. Other benefit very funny incident in 2014 World Cup right? so we had two T shirts design on England football team and we had a huge orders that times in our business grew like four times in that month because of the FIFA World Cup. So that was personally was printing and delivering the t shirt for us. We were not able to handle so much. So we had a lot of orders for English Football team. The designer T shirts by the time he was delivering it. English team was out got . And we got everything returned to us. It was like 200 T shirts at our home.

it's a very different business altogether. And if I could do that, then I'm running an E commerce company and a media company together and they will let us stick to one do one really really better than trying to sell into goods.

that's definitely a good strategy. I think. Wow! that's that was this was really good, insightful conversation Porush. Thank you very much for giving the insight and giving us your views on so many different things. I'm sure our audience really did enjoy it. And it definitely is a conversation to sort of keep coming back to as you know, I'm sure within our audience that are potentially aspiring entrepreneurs who wants to sort of set up their own business and your journey would really inspire a lot of people I think and we hope

I will say, if I can do it then anyone can do it.

Right. Yes, that is a really modest way to look at it. But no, absolutely. That's the message we want to give out. Is there anything else you want to add or talk about before we finish the call about Sportskeeda and your journey?

No, Not really. I think I've covered a lot.

Thanks, Thanks Porush for joining our show today. It was really amazing!

Thank you. Thanks Amit, Thanks Rinat. Thank You.

Thank You everyone

Cheers, bye Porush.