In an enlightening conversation with Praatibh Surana, co-founder of the "Cricket by JB" YouTube channel, we delve into the intricacies of creating cricket content. Praatibh elucidates the pivotal role that passion and dedication play in the journey toward establishing a successful platform, particularly in a landscape inundated with content. He shares valuable insights into the evolution of their channel, emphasizing the need to identify a niche amid the vast ocean of cricket-related media. Furthermore, we explore the challenges and opportunities of monetization, particularly during high-stakes events such as the IPL, which significantly shape revenue streams. This discourse not only sheds light on the mechanics of content creation but also offers guidance for aspiring creators navigating the complexities of the digital cricketing realm.

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Cricket by JB - YouTube

Hello and welcome to the last wicket.

Today we have Pratib Surana of Cricket by JB YouTube channel.

Pratib.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Hi Mayank, thanks so much for having me.

Pleasure to be on the podcast itself.

I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Awesome.

I'm just really excited to learn about you.

I came across your YouTube channel.

And then I started looking at YouTube and I was like, wow, these guys have done an awesome job in terms of just the quality of content, just the way they've produced it, everything.

And clearly looks like you have 30 plus thousand followers.

So it's, it's a formula that's working.

So I'm just really excited to learn about your journey.

Walk us through your.

And obviously you can speak for Aswin, who's your partner in this as well.

What is your background?

Have you played cricket?

And how did you get into content creation full time?

Oh, awesome.

Okay, so this goes back very similar to how we were talking off air of how you guys also started around Covid.

That's also when Ashwin and I started.

And so we've been friends for about 20 years now.

So.

So we kind of became friends because we used to play cricket and that's basically what we used to do our entire childhood.

Also both played professionally.

So there was that cricketing background as well, until about the under 16s is where we played till seriously.

And then of course life happens.

You have your degree and everything, so you move on.

But there was always this passion for cricket as well as creating content.

So some of my earliest memories are creating content or having YouTube channels as early as, say when I was 12 years old.

Something to do with gaming or whatever.

It is just for the fun of putting content out.

So I've always had that inclination.

And same is the case with Ashwin.

In fact, even as kids, even when we were say about 10 or 11, we'd done a couple of YouTube videos where we done like a forward defense master class or a back foot defense masterclass.

So there was always that inclination to have cricket as part of our lives.

And cut to Covid.

Because of the fact that everyone's just at home and we sort of needed a creative outlet, we decided that we should start a podcast of sorts.

It wasn't cricket to begin with.

We used to Just have conversations with people all over the world.

So we would talk to voice actors, we talk to sports journalists, we talk to people from different professions or people affected by war, just the entire spectrum, just for the joy of having a conversation with someone and learning about them.

And we realized that there's also scope to do something in cricket because we love cricket.

And cricket was then starting to restart because the lockdown restrictions were coming off at the time.

So we thought, hey, we'll give this a shot as well.

And that's basically where the journey kind of started.

Of course, we realized at some point that having such a broad spectrum of topics on a channel is not going to work because you just don't have any audiences that stick.

And so that's when we started Cricket by jb, which became a separate entity altogether.

And yeah, in terms of backgrounds itself, so I'm an engineer by degree, even I was working a corporate job for a couple of years.

Ashwin, too is a broadcast journalist by degree, so he did his masters in London and everything.

So there is that side that you might see now on Cricket by jb, where it is data heavy as well as.

Well as well produced.

So that comes from both of our sort of strengths, if you can say that.

And he too was working a job.

And at around 20, 23 is when we were putting cricket content out.

But we were doing it part time, but we'd seen some good response.

So we were seeing the odd cricketer reach out to us on Twitter or just sort of appreciate our content.

And we realized that maybe there's something to it.

And that's also when we were developing a bit of an audience.

And so we thought, we'll take the punt for a year, set a couple of goals and see if we can reach there.

And that's how it started.

That's awesome.

That's really amazing.

What you mentioned is kind of similar to, you know, my journey.

Played until under 16 and tried getting selected into the Delhi under 16 team.

That didn't work out.

And then suddenly studies and career and all of that became the focus.

And like you, like, obviously I'm a little bit older than you and I won't date myself, but, you know, back in the day when I started and both me and Benny, I'll speak for both of us, when we started following cricket online, it was Twitter and it was all of that and was blogging, that was the thing to do.

And that's how our journey started, which is why YouTube was always an afterthought for us.

But otherwise pretty Similar journey.

We wanted to, you know, use our energy towards cricket and our passion towards cricket into something creative.

And that's how this podcast came together.

Now you've found a formula.

You mentioned, you know, that you saw the odd response from cricketers.

You've, you obviously tried various things, not just cricket, but other topics, and you've now been able to build that solid following.

What are your suggestions to people who are starting out today?

Or what are your, hey, do not do this, this is a mistake.

You know, sort of lessons learned, if any, that you suggest to people.

Do you mean this for YouTube in general or just cricket in particular?

I, I think cricket content creation in general.

Yeah.

If you know more about YouTube, that's, that's all good.

We are all ears.

Awesome.

Cool.

Okay, so where do I start?

I think some of the earliest things we did were all mistakes, looking back because there were a lot of topics.

There was no set agenda, of course, there was a kind of a central theme where we did want to talk to people, but a lot of things that, that we did.

Firstly we weren't, I mean, we were consistent, but we didn't have a set schedule in place.

So things like that do matter.

Having a sort of theme, identifying the kind of niche that you want.

But I also don't expect people to be able to immediately know what they want to have as a niche.

Right.

It's something that I feel like is an iterative process because even once we started Cricket by jb, we're still sort of trying to understand what is it that sticks and what is it that will bring an audience.

Because we are guilty of also having paid money to promote our first couple of videos to see where that lands us in terms of views or subscribers and whether that sticks or not.

So essentially a lot of trial and error that got us through an initial phase and then we realized that there is a definitive white space in terms of data and technical nuance on cricket content.

Because a lot of what we saw in India at that point was very masala, so to speak, or very views driven and just very high emotion content which also works on social media.

I mean, we still rage bait people with the kind of thumbnails that we have in place.

But ultimately, I think there was a white space wherein people wanted to know more about the game from a deeper lens.

They wanted to understand why a batter is making a certain change or why a bowler is now bowling this delivery and why is it effective, something as trivial as that, but explained in great detail.

So that's where we Realized is where we can make our niche.

And I think that's what I'd suggest to anyone.

Starting out with content.

Of course, consistency is a huge factor of it and you aren't going to see success or virality immediately.

Even if you do, it's very short lived, it's not going to be sustainable in the long run.

But yeah, consistency does become important and iteration does become important as well.

I want to double click into a couple of things you mentioned there.

One is the masala aspect.

That is something that I was actually going to ask and I forgot to mention to you beforehand.

But yeah, there's so much content out there today.

Obviously every person today has a good Internet, good camera.

They are just making content and trying to get viral, trying to get popular.

How is it, how do you make that balance of hey, let's make sure we are getting the clicks or you know, getting the following without like having, you know, cheap shots.

Like obviously what I mean by cheap shots is, you know, I don't need coverage about Hardik Pandya's girlfriend or who he's dating.

Right.

That sort of stuff.

Right.

So that's actually a really good question because it also ties into which platforms you work on.

Right.

So generally we've noticed, or at least early on in our journey some of these things that we do on YouTube that has a lot more to do with numbers and technicality does better because that brings in a long form audience that is more looking forward to watching something like that.

Whereas on a platform like Instagram for example, that is very shorts driven or very reels driven and is very 60 second content where people are looking mostly for dopamine hits.

That's where we struggled for the longest time because we, we were doing the same stuff.

We were still talking numbers, we were still talking technique, but barely anybody would watch it.

And so there we had to tweak things a little.

So I think on Instagram what worked for us is to sort of have a hook that kind of brings about a certain emotion and that could be an extreme emotion, but then you break it down into numbers and nuance.

So we still stick to our niche, but it's just a different method of doing it.

And I think that's what kind of matters, like understanding which platform it is and what audiences also you're targeting.

Yeah, that's a great point because yeah, I agree with you.

I think if, if, you know, if I write, obviously as I mentioned, I prefer writing over video more, but when I write, if I write something about, hey, Ishan Kishan has done this.

This is the analysis versus how has Ishan Kishan transformed his cricket?

You know, the second one obviously gets a lot more clicks and it's just the nature of how you frame it and things like that.

And knowing your audience to your point really does matter from that perspective.

So that's a great point.

And do you think there is scope of being platform specific?

Like in the sense that once you find out this is a particular format or this is the audience that works for you, or the kind of content you want to create, do you stick with that or do you tell people, hey, try everything and try to fit your same content across platforms?

Right.

So again, I can only speak for cricket because I know it would work differently across domains.

But I mean, one thing's for sure, if you're going to do long form content, you want to do it on YouTube.

But that also means that it's going to be more effort, there's going to be more planning that's required, especially if you're going to try and do it more frequently.

Whereas with short form content, you at least have a little bit of liberty with being able to produce a fairly decent frequency, but not at the cost of maybe putting in as much effort as you would for long form content.

And the other thing also you want to see is that what platform works for you might also be dependent on what your goal is.

If it's something that you're doing just for the fact that you enjoy maybe interacting with people, having the likes, having the views, having that numbers game going for you, then it makes sense for you to be on Instagram.

It's also something that helps you get brand deals beyond a certain point.

So Even I'd say 5,000 followers, there are brands who would come out and give micro creators, for example, some sort of collaboration opportunities wherein you can make a small to decent passive income.

Whereas the moment you come on long form, the moment you come on doing YouTube videos, you are looking essentially to build out a community or a cult audience and it inevitably becomes a long term goal.

Right?

That's something that does take years to build out.

And whichever way you look at it, anyone who's been on YouTube and has a decent amount of subscribers has taken at least a couple of years to understand their audience and to build out that cult.

So it primarily, I would say, is subjective on the kind of goals you also have.

If it's more of an outlet for fun and maybe getting those odd brand deals, Instagram is probably your best place because that's what is in fashion right now.

Everyone likes scrolling reels and everything.

Whereas YouTube is a more long term game and could possibly even be the starting point of something else you want to do.

So, for example, a lot of companies, what they do is they leverage YouTube as a platform to build out some sort of distribution and then they pitch a product to the kind of audience that they have because they're assuming that they've hit a certain demographic that they can then target with maybe their app or maybe their product or whatever it is, knowing that these people have an interest and so they might be more likely to click and.

Or maybe use the product.

That makes sense.

And I guess I'm curious what kind of team is needed to pull this off?

You know, you're, you guys are doing it with a lot of consistency and at the end of your, some of your videos, I've noticed credits for people who are producing it.

So walk us through the team, through whatever you need before the recording.

We're talking about a studio as well, so.

Yeah, tell us all about it.

Right.

So I mean, something that I have to admit is that we are both in a very privileged place to be able to have taken the leap to do this full time.

Because I do think the sustained effort only comes from a place of firstly knowing that you have people backing you and people who can help you out, but also just that financial burden not being there for now because we are early on in our careers and we can take that leap is something that's definitely worked for us.

And that's something I'd like to acknowledge as well.

But apart from that as well, a big part of why we're consistent is largely the team.

So if you take YouTube's example, of course, even if we do no editing, like even if we do no video editing, it is still something that is intensive and done over a long period of time.

And with other things that you do, for example, research around the video or for example, I'd sit down and write some code to pull out certain kinds of numbers.

Now of course it's a lot easier with Claude and all of that out there, but initially that was a challenge.

How are we going to distribute our time for various tasks?

Be it research, be it pulling the data, be it finding a story or scripting and then recording it, ensuring that sort of the cameras and the hardware, the mics, everything are working properly.

So there's a lot of moving parts.

And at some point we had to make that conscious decision of getting people on board so that we could focus on some Other tasks to possibly scale the channel.

So yeah, we do have a video editor for long form.

We do have an editor for our reels content.

And now we also have an intern because we also at some point had decided that we wanted to do women's cricket as well, cover everything there.

And we needed someone who was a more, who was more of a subject matter expert than us on women's cricket.

So that's where she came in.

And then at some point when your YouTube channel has reached a certain scale, you want to be able to give it a professional look.

And so having someone like a graphic designer for your thumbnails, that's what mattered there.

So essentially we are a team of six.

Ashwin and I are full time, two of us and the rest are part time, of course.

But eventually we do realize that we will have to scale that as well.

That makes sense.

And I guess that's the team that's needed anything from a studio perspective or things.

And by the way, I appreciate your honesty about, you know, how it requires a certain sort of, you know, backing in financial stability.

Because starting this, as amazing and as fun as the journey can be, it does take a while where you, before you see sort of the payoff.

So it's, it's, you know, it takes a while.

So it's, it's great that you're being honest about that journey and that privilege that you have.

But the other question I had is what other things do you.

Do you see in terms of, you know, studios and that sort of thing that is needed for this consistency?

Right.

So I think you can be consistent even with the most basic setup, being able to record.

I think most smartphones do a decent enough job.

And for mics also, there's a lot of affordable options.

So I won't say that you want to start out with the best of equipment, but I think that's also conscious decision that we made at some point.

So we started out with fairly decent equipment, like using our phones and whatever it is.

Like we used to even record audio on our phone itself.

But at some point when we were starting to hit numbers, we realized that maybe this could be worth the investment because then we'd improve the overall quality, have better audience retention.

So to start off, I would say that if you have a phone, I think it's more than good enough because once at least you reach a place where, okay, you're being consistent with whatever you have, then you know that you can take that next leap because there is no fear of losing the consistency, at least so that's how I look at it.

That makes sense.

And I guess a related question is how do you figure out.

So you've defined the roles.

You've said, okay, this person is going to be my video editor, this person's going to be my short form video editor, graphics guy, whatever that is.

You know, you set up that team, set up that structure so that you and Ashwin can really focus, focus on the content to be delivered.

You know, what is, what are the key points that you're going to talk about?

What are you going to cover within that?

How do you figure out what content to work on?

Because.

And there's two reasons I asked that.

One, there is so much cricket going on all the time.

Yes.

You know that it's, it's just hard to track, especially with all the T20 franchise leagues that have popped up in the last few years.

I, I struggle to keep up.

Like I do not watch, I watch the less, less of T20 than Test and ODIs and well, ODI is almost done now, but Test cricket.

But you know, I try to watch IPL for sure.

I'll try to catch it with some of the others.

But how do you keep up with all of it?

Do you try to watch as much of it as possible?

And then how do you decide what know based on what is going on, what's the content or what type of content you'll, you'll work on.

Got it.

So I'll break this down for you in a couple of ways.

Right.

The first thing is I think it would be wrong to admit that we are able to follow all kinds of cricket because Indian cricket in itself is extremely tough to follow.

So I mean, men's cricket happens basically throughout the year, barring maybe a month or two.

Women's cricket is also now starting to pick up in terms of how often series are happening.

But even outside of that, we wanted to make a conscious effort to track everything, at least within Indian cricket.

And even that becomes tough because there's also a lot of domestic stuff going on.

So for example, we can't track something like a coach Bihar or a Vinumankar as judiciously.

And that's like the under 19s or under 23s as opposed to maybe say giving more importance to a Ranji Trophy from where you know that if a player does well, there is a chance they might make it to India.

And so it would be nice to have information on them.

Right.

Uh, and so it helps that we are also both not very inclined towards T20.

So we are Also very purist in the test match sense.

So we enjoy longer formats of cricket, which made it very easy for us to let go of watching a lot of T20 leagues and just focus on the IPL, because that's also the time when you can make a lot of money, because that's when all the brands are active and all of that.

So consciously we made a decision to focus solely on Indian cricket and say, for example, if it is the Ashes and that's the time when maybe there's just an Indian bilateral series going on and you know that Steve Smith has gone on to score four hundreds or Steve Smith has gone on to have a stinker of an Ashes, then we do a technical video on Steve Smith, for example.

So that's how I look at it.

That's one angle.

The other thing also is you want to be able to look at what kind of content works for you.

So by that what I mean is because of the fact that cricket, there's so much cricket happening, the relevance is lost very fast.

So if I were to make a video on Friday, for example, and if there's a game on Sunday, then my Friday video is already dead and nobody's going to bother looking at it beyond the Sunday game.

And so you have to be very careful in terms of how you structure even your videos that are on present events in cricket.

And I think one of the best insights that I've gotten from just talking to a lot of content creators and reading a lot of stuff online is to be able to have content that is evergreen in some sense, in a manner such that anytime a person comes back to that particular piece, they're able to get something out of it.

I think a good example would be one of our more popular videos, like a Suresh video, for example.

It's going to be evergreen because everyone knew that Sureshayana had this short ball problem, but there's not too many videos on the Internet about it for some odd reason.

And so that's something that essentially becomes a cash cow for us because the one like it picked up and then it still continues to get views to this day.

And this is about two years later.

So evergreen content does matter and we try and do as much of that as possible, even with our content that is related to the more recent cricket.

So even if it's something related to the T20 World cup, we'll talk about the evolution of Shivam Dubey so that even someone from the future who might want to learn about Shivam Dubey and what happened in that T20 World cup can come back to that particular video.

So that's how we try and structure it.

That makes a lot of sense.

And I feel even some of the popular freelancers that I think of, you know, obviously he does, I'm thinking of Jared Kimber and he obviously does day off reviews and YouTube and all of that.

But I think his core of his content is still very, very, you know, timeless in the sense that he'll talk about how this player evolved or what changed and things like that.

And obviously he'll still cover the big series and all of that.

But, but nonetheless, it does help that sometimes I do, you know, if, let's say a player does well and I'm like, you know what?

I remember reading whoever write this, write about it, I do go back to those articles and be like, let me understand the journey a little bit better.

Makes sense.

The, the other aspect that I was thinking of as, as you were talking about that is have you guys considered like following cricket in terms of, you know, you mentioned Ranji Trophy and all of that.

Back when I was in India, I used to love going to Ranji Trophy because there's nobody there.

So there's, there's no rush.

There's no, you know, it's easy access.

Exactly.

So I would just sit on this in the stands and, you know, watch a game and then when I, when I had to leave, I would leave.

It's not like I'm wasting any money or anything like that, but what I didn't probably do at that point is try to talk to people and players and upcoming players.

Have you guys thought of that as an angle or have you already done that?

Where do you stand on that?

Right, so there's a couple of things here as well.

Right.

One thing that we've always wanted to do for the longest time is to be able to look at the non athlete side of things in terms of cricket.

So like we wanted to do a lot of stuff where we could go and maybe shoot content with the broadcasters, maybe look at behind the scenes of how this really shows up on your TV or your OTT platform.

What are the camera switches that are happening or what are the groundsmen doing to prepare a certain pitch.

So that is something that we do want to get into.

But at the same time we realize that that requires a lot of permissions.

There's a lot of back and forth and hassle to get that sorted.

Because even when we did have the opportunities to say, have media box access for something like Maharaja Trophy, it was an Absolute pain to try and convince the people that we want to do a video for you guys in collaboration with our own channel, where we basically break down the entire broadcast setup, how certain calls are made, what the director says, what happens behind the scenes.

So that is something that we've always wanted to.

Wanted to do, but we also realized that that is something that will require more networking, knowing more people in the industry and then making that happen.

So maybe sometime in the future.

But.

Yeah, I think I lost the essence of your original question.

Or does that.

No, no, I, I think, I think you, you, you're right around there.

My original question was, you know, just talking to young players for their journey.

Right, right.

You know, for, for example, we see all these wonderful reports and usually it's from, you know, the established players, the Indian Express of the World, or, or, you know, those, those people will have the time to go and watch a Ranji Trophy game and let's say there's a youngster who impresses them, they'll go talk to them and understand their journey and they'll understand their struggles.

And you see somebody like Ian Bishop who does a great job of preparing and learning about their journey and speaks to it in the IPL or in.

Even in international cricket to some extent.

And I find that content really unique because one, not everybody can do it.

Like I, sitting here, unfortunately cannot go back to India and watch a T20 game when, or a domestic game when I am there.

Yes, I can maybe try to catch on to one.

But to your point, the access, all of that really does matter.

So that was kind of my question and maybe a sidebar to it is.

And you may not have had an experience with this, but, but my, my thought, there is a lot of young players these days also, and even in Ranji Trophy, even in Syed Mustak Ali Trophy, already have contracts or like people who manage them.

So that has that also become a challenge in terms of getting access?

Yeah, 100%.

I think some of the things that I hear from journalists who've been around in the industry for a while is that player access was much easier back in the day, wherein you could just possibly, if you're at the stadium and the cricketer knows that you're a prominent enough journalist, you can just go ahead and go down to them and have a conversation with.

And it wouldn't be a big deal.

Whereas now, even for someone at the state level, it requires you multiple times to reach out to their managers, because most of them do have managers.

And then you need to try and schedule Something, and there's always usually some kind of fee involved, and that's generally never worth the roi, unless it's like, a player who's really going to boom in the next couple of years and you luck out in that case.

So it's mostly that, right?

Unless you have a solid enough network, it becomes very tough to get any kind of access to these players.

And even with a decent network, even if, say, your friend is a manager of a cricketer, it still becomes very tough, even for someone like them, who is the direct manager, to be able to schedule time.

So that plays a part.

The finances of it don't make any sort of sense, if I'm being very honest.

Like, there is absolutely no roi, and you would have to be either really big in terms of just having the financial freedom to be able to go out and do that regularly, or.

Yeah, it's mostly just a couple of these things.

So it becomes very tough.

Yeah.

And I think the ROI is an interesting piece because one of the things that I was thinking of is just last episode that we had was with Shubha Garwal, who was a desk writer for Crickinfo, and I was talking to him about his journey, and he was like, I've done social media, I've done desk writing for crickinfo, I've worked for cricket.com doing statistical pieces, and that's a very traditional journey.

Did you guys ever consider that, or was that never something that occurred to you and you were like, no, we'll do our own bit, right?

So I think when we started out, because of how naive we were, we just went ahead with the content stuff.

But at some point, around maybe one, one and a half, two years into this, we realized that, like, financially, this is just a dream, and it becomes really tough to do this full time.

Right?

And at least me, I can't speak for Ashwin on this, but at least me at various points would think that maybe it's time that I also do something along with this.

Maybe I just join something like a Crick Tracker, or I try and apply for ESP and become a writer or a commentary guy for them or something of that sort, just so that you have some kind of steady inflow of revenue into the company.

So I think that's a very valid concern.

And that's also why I maintain a substack now, because I also want to be able to build out my own personal profile.

But at the same time, we realized that because of the kind of traction we were getting with our content, at some point, it would help us get asymmetric returns in some sense.

And I feel like that's starting to happen in a couple of ways now, where maybe for the first couple of years we barely saw any kind of financial revenue coming in, but that's something that's changed and also in terms of the opportunity.

So, for example, if I can tell you an instance where I think Kohli was struggling against pin and we'd made this reel about it and it popped off, it would have done maybe 130,000 views on Instagram and someone who was managing the Maharaja Trophies PR at the time happened to watch that reel and they happened to DM us and that's how we got media box access for the Maharaja trophy.

So those are the kind of returns that content could bring you and it could basically help build out a portfolio for you.

So that's how I look at it.

But I think for anyone starting out, if you're looking at it from a revenue standpoint, you need to give it time.

That's all I'll say.

You need to give it at least a couple of years before you start seeing any sort of feasible returns to be able to continue doing this.

Yeah.

And that patience, to your point, is important because initially that, you know, views that will give you something like access in your case, rather than revenue directly.

But.

But I think if you keep being consistent, that revenue does show up.

Yeah, I mean, I think.

I think that's where the challenge is and that's where I am curious about your thoughts on the future of.

I won't say just cricket content creation, but just freelancing in cricket in general.

Right.

And the reason I asked this is I feel there's so many of us are very passionate about the game, have played the game, but couldn't make it to senior levels and want to keep connected.

We want to stay connected with the game.

So I know a lot of us will or are hoping that now that social media is easier, YouTube is easier.

To your point, anybody can buy a mic and a good phone camera and start making decent content right now that this is in place.

Like, what do you think the future of freelancing is like in terms of two to two to five years, maybe 10 years down the line, especially now with AI coming in and there being a lot more ability to do edits and things like that, you know, using Claude or whatever other tool you're using.

Yeah.

Where do you think freelancing is going?

Do you really think it's.

I guess, is it a really career path that is worth pursuing.

And yeah, I guess I'll leave it at that.

Okay, that's a tricky question and I'm probably not the best person to answer that.

I'm sure many people who've been in the industry longer would have a far broader picture on this.

But from my experience, I mean, I've seen the good and bad, right?

Even in terms of the interactions that I have with people around me, I do understand that AI in some sense is taking over a lot of things.

I mean, it's made code more accessible, it's made writing easier.

And just a lot of.

I mean, we've seen this now with a lot of news outlets just copy pasting ChatGPT content onto their articles.

So there's a lot of that that's happening.

But.

But at the same time, I do realize that I think if you're doing a decent job within your domain, be it writing, be it being able to code a tool, it might not get you monetary rewards, but I think there is still an appreciation for it.

As for it being a freelance career, I do think that it is getting tougher and tougher because I mean, to stand above the rest is becoming tougher because everyone has a new base that keeps going up thanks to the abilities of what a CLAUDE can do.

For example, I mean, if I look at myself, I'm not a good coder by any means, but because of the fact that I now have Claude, I can still do something with wall by wall data.

For example, I can come out with a basic tool and that's the increase in threshold now.

So I think if you can keep up with the threshold and just do one better than that, then there is still a lot of scope for you.

But the moment it becomes you competing with just the threshold itself, I think that's where the problem begins.

Yeah, and a bit of that is also the access to the data and things like that.

A hundred percent.

You talked about ball by ball and for years I feel like I've been trying to get my hands around it.

And to your point, like, I'm exactly the same, I'm a terrible coder.

It's why my life does not depend on it, because I would not be paying myself very well if my life depended on it.

But.

But yeah, just having that access is also.

There's so much firewalls.

Like I.

Exactly.

I was like, hey, I just.

Quick quiz is awesome.

Let me just get access to quick quiz.

I don't care.

Exactly.

I was like, wait, this is a ridiculous amount of money for a freelancer to even try to come up with.

So that.

But, but the good thing is, to your point, it is changing from the perspective of, hey, there's a lot of people who are creating their databases or dashboards and giving people free access.

There's tools like Crick Metric, which are, which are amazing.

So that is helping.

But I think the downside of it to your point is it's getting tougher because there's way more competition now and a lot more people are trying to use those same tools to come up with something unique, some sort of analysis that helps them stand out.

Yeah, 100%.

I mean, I think the data point is a whole other discussion because we've had that issue for the longest time where we've tried to get in touch with Crickwiz, we've got trial data for access, but then it doesn't work out in the long term because the finances make absolutely zero sense for a company that's fairly small.

I mean, even for the Giants, I don't know how many of them are actually using Krikviz actively with a subscription and all of that.

So yeah, I think from that lens it does become tough.

It doesn't help also that in a place like India where BCCI is handling all of this, they are extremely short sighted.

I don't think they see the point of democratizing the data.

And also Hawkeye just getting more and more strict with their data access and their policies around it.

So it is definitely tricky.

And I think Himanish has also spoken about it multiple times how he might not encourage people at this stage at least to get into maybe cricket analysis as a full time job because there's just so much fight and there's just so much, a lot of things not going in the way of people who actually want to make a difference.

Yeah, yeah, that I can understand that.

I think there's hopefully down the path there is a time when it becomes easier and you know, like people keep talking about the baseball model where things are just a lot more freely available.

Yeah, I don't know if we want to go to the baseball model because baseball as from an outsider's perspective, from somebody who moved to this country 10, 12 years ago, is a very tough sport to get into because it's so numbers oriented and so heavily like that.

So I don't know if you want to go to that extreme.

But I do agree that we need a lot more data access as freelancers to, to, you know, make money or, you know, really just make good content, which is backed by data.

Right.

My last question to you will be, what is your end goal?

Like, obviously you guys have done an amazing job of, you know, scaling to this huge number of subscribers in two, two and a half years of cricket content.

And how did you get to even the point of monetization?

Maybe I'll start there and then.

Yeah.

I was also curious if you, when you started, did you have a goal in mind, like somebody who inspired you or was it something you were like, let me just try this out.

And now you have a different end goal.

Awesome.

So I think firstly on the starting out bit, it was purely from the place of a love for cricket.

We never imagined this as what we'd be doing full time a couple of years down the line.

I think that was, that was something that we eventually wanted to do.

Like we wanted to be associated with the industry, but we did not know that this would be the path.

Somewhere along the way we discovered, I mean, we had always been following Jared Kimber, but we realized that that is probably a good North Star to target for a short term goal where we want to be able to do what Jared's doing.

I think his work is extremely commendable.

And now we essentially wanted to be an Indian version of that, to be able to get that same quality.

So that's where it started.

But in terms of long term goals itself, we do realize that in this particular niche there's only so much scale that we will be able to accomplish because there is only going to be so many people who would be interested in what we do.

And so I think the larger goal that Ashwin and I have is to scale beyond just cricket.

Right.

And I'm not saying this only with regards to sports, but we want to be able to do something similar across various domains.

So essentially our brand, that is the Jasbati Media brand, we'd want to make it an umbrella under which there are various topics and to be able to scale various content pieces across domains.

So that is a long term goal.

We've just started our second channel, in fact, that deals with a lot of things about people in their 20s and life and all of that stuff.

But it's not fluff.

There's a lot of research oriented nuance into that as well and eventually we'd want to get into other things.

But I think Ashwin and I now realize that we are in a place where content is something that has become a good chunk of our expertise and if everything works out, this is where we'd want to continue doing majority of our work.

And one other piece was how did you get to the point of monetizing it?

Monetization, yes.

So that, I mean, you mentioned a lot about, you know, how you got into this, who you're, you know, who you look up to.

But yeah, I think the Suresh Raina video you mentioned interviews with Jamima Rodrigues, for example.

Right.

That obviously those play a big part in helping the monetization bit.

So talk us through your journey of that.

Awesome.

So if you look at YouTube, there is a set requirement that they have, which is over the past 365 days, you need to have 4,000 watch hours and you need to have at least thousand subscribers.

So once you hit that Threshold is when YouTube essentially runs ads on your platform and you can make money off of that.

Now what I mean by that is, say, for example, we have a certain video that's playing and someone like a Swiggy, for example, or any app or any brand runs their ad on it.

And from the clicks that are generated on that particular ad or from someone watching the entire ad, you get a chunk, a very small portion of the revenue.

In India, it's really small.

So for every thousand views that you get on a long form video, you'd make about 50 Indian rupees.

So it's really, really tiny.

And you can't sort of assume that to be your main source of revenue because that's always going to be a very, very small chunk.

So that's on how you can get started on monetization.

But after a point, you have to be able to pitch to brands.

So I think there's a lot of back and forth that Ashwin and I do have with a lot of different brands where we are constantly pitching to these companies to, for example, run the their ads or their product on our channel.

And maybe if it's a fit, for example, if it's a cricket app or a cricket game, then they we can possibly use our distribution or our leverage with the audience and the trust we've built to be able to sell that product to the audience itself.

Now, we don't endorse gambling or betting or any of that.

That's something that we actively stay away from because that does pay good money.

But in the long term, it's not something that's feasible because a lot of channels just fizzle out.

That's something you need to keep in mind.

So I think the moment you reach a certain amount of scale that is grown organically, it does open up a lot of parallel opportunities for you in terms of monetization.

But, yeah, I think to get started, if you can hit the YouTube ad revenue requirement, that's a good starting point.

And beyond that, you just need to find a lot of creative ways of creative, sustainable models for revenue.

I'm glad you shared that, because I had no idea about it.

So, yeah, that's something that's really good to know.

And is there on other platforms, Instagram and all of that, is there similar requirements to monetization?

I guess they work a little bit differently.

There's not ads on Instagram, so I wouldn't think it would work exactly the same way.

But probably after a certain number of followers on Instagram, there's more, I guess your videos pop up more.

Things like that are still true, right?

So, I mean, scale does help because it helps push out your videos more into the algorithm, irrespective of what platform it is.

But to my knowledge, I think YouTube is the only one that beyond a certain threshold, pays you for the video itself.

Whereas on Instagram, it's usually, even if you have maybe 100,000 followers, your reel itself will not get money for the kind of views that it generates.

But because you've reached that scale, there's a good chance that a brand will reach out to you and want to collaborate, and so that becomes your model.

On Instagram.

That makes sense.

And reaching out to brands, what has that been like?

I guess my.

What I've noticed is during the ipl, every brand in India is super active and trying to get, you know, a piece of the traffic.

What, what about the other 10 months?

And, and how is, how easy is it to.

For, you know, I'll call yourself content creators or freelancers who are trying to make their own journey to work with these brands, because they obviously probably have certain expectations, certain goals or, you know, whatever it might be, certain things that they are targeting.

So how easy has it been to work with them?

It's been a mixed bag, to be honest.

We've also, we've worked with brands who are very lenient or not lenient.

I think lenient's not the right word.

Who are very open to getting your ideas on board.

I think there are certain brands that really let you have complete creative freedom and would not alter even a thing in terms of your content or your pitch, as long as there are certain guidelines that are, of course being met.

But there are also brands who are extremely stingy.

And I think I'll probably have a piece on this on Substack at some point, because I have been working with a bunch of brands and there's just a variety of things that people want.

So yeah, that's something to keep in mind.

Beyond that, yeah, it's been an interesting experience because a lot of times you'll have these introductory calls, you'll basically grill you for an hour where you're sort of explaining why you can be a good fit and they're happy with everything, they get the proposals and all of that and then you just, there's radio silence.

You don't hear back from these people ever again.

Whereas on the flip side there's also people who just on the first glance are ready to have you on board even if it's for just maybe a couple of videos.

So it's very subjective based on the kind of brands you're working with.

Of course, IPL does become a very key time for a lot of these brands to just go all out because literally all of India's eyeballs are on that tournament and content around that tournament.

So IPL is definitely the time that we do generate most amount of our revenue.

But yeah, I think like for example, this year is a good one because the first six months is just T20 cricket.

So it's fast paced.

A lot of brands are looking to collaborate.

There's a couple of World Cups, I mean Men's World cup just got over and we have the Women's World cup as well.

So in this particular year it's going to be six months where we see a lot of brands looking to, looking for activations rather and looking to collaborate.

Whereas there can also be times where for a couple of months your revenue just drops in dead.

So you need to be able to have some plans in place that can also help you navigate those lows.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

And if you don't mind, you know, sharing or if you know what's the percentage of like this is 80% of revenues during IPL versus 20% rest of the year.

Is that something like that that you've noticed in the past couple of years or are you still figuring that out?

Right, so I mean we're still figuring that out because I think only in the last one, one and a half year is where we've actually started making a decent amount of revenue.

But I will say that IPL could do anything between 50 to 80% of your revenue for at least a six month period or maybe even a year after that.

It depends also on the kind of gigs.

I think for example, when the whole gambling ban happened, a lot of the money got redistributed.

Into different markets.

And because we weren't doing betting or gambling, we obviously lost out on those opportunities before the ban.

But now that there is a ban, a lot of these companies are doing different things.

Dreamlevin, for example, is now doing a separate app for creators only, and they want those creators to do lives.

And then the creators get paid based on how much audience they can get or how many views they can get.

I don't know the exact model.

So in the current scenario, it is better because the money has been redistributed in a different way, so there are more opportunities that might come by.

For example, there are times when we host a separate show on a separate app altogether, and then it becomes like a freelance gig where we are the hosts.

And so that's something that you can keep in mind.

And honestly, it's a very dynamic space in that sense because things keep changing.

But at the end of it all, I think brands are still what will make a good chunk of your revenue.

In Ashwin, and my case, something we are also actively trying to do is get analytics into the system itself.

So, for example, analytics and even how you can start off on YouTube.

So we are trying to do lectures, be it in a college or be it in schools, or try and do some kind of workshops.

So that becomes an additional source of revenue, albeit depending on the kind of scale or depending on the kind of responses you get.

That's something that varies, that makes sense.

And since you mentioned some of the websites, I had no idea Dream11 was doing that.

For example, what are the other popular apps that.

That are, you know, asking you to create content and work from that perspective?

Right.

I think Dream11 is the biggest because not only do they have a lot of market captured already, but they also have data.

They also have the money to be able to spend on this.

So Dream11 is a prominent one.

And there are a lot of fringe apps.

I mean, there's way too many.

I think Crex is one that's doing really well, even in terms of their domestic cricket coverage.

Now, I think their scorecards at some point were even faster updating than CrickBuzz and ESPN.

So there's cracks, obviously.

There's ESPN, CrickInfo, there's CrickBuzz.

But something we are seeing as a trend with these guys, like with ESPN or Craigbuzz, is that at least on Instagram, they're open to a lot more people collaborating with them, a lot more creators.

Even icc, for example, is collaborating with a lot of creators, but not necessarily cricket.

So even if you're a lifestyle creator, but you have a certain amount of following, they'll invite you to a game and you can have some sort of deal where you collaborate with them for set number of reels.

But Yeah, I think Dream 11 is still the biggest.

There's a lot of fringe ones.

There's actually way too many fringe ones and it would even be region specific.

So you might have an app that is only tailored to Hindi content, something that is only tailored to Bengali content.

So it's the entire spectrum that's really good to know.

On that note, Pratap, thank you so much for your time.

It's been an education for me.

I have no idea about monetization and all these apps out there, so it's been really fun to understand that and also learn about your journey, which in some ways is similar to how we started this podcast.

Thank you so much for your time and yeah, we hope we'll get a chance to connect with you again in the future.

Thank you.

It was my pleasure.

Thanks for the invite and it was a good chat.