In the last few years, there has been a lot of concern over how today’ youth favor Netflix to a book that is good. Even though Amazon’s Kindle obtained us electronic publications chat fiction is altering the way.
With a focus on engaging for the youth and making the story more interesting, Abhay Gupta developed Ficting, a program that’s a combination of fiction and texting.
Launched in November 2018the program is currently trying to revive the habit of reading by providing non-distractive and engaging storyline, which grabs their attention and then hooks them on.
Incubated in IIT-Kanpur, the startup has also got a fellowship from#xA0;NTT Data.
Abhay Gupta, Founder and CEO, Ficting
Abhay himself was a not a reader, and says he used to have distracted while reading. However, while growing up, he believed and had been curious in self learning.
A BTech graduate, he acquired the concept of Ficting while functioning at Wipro as an associate consultant. He felt finishing a book, that the current generation also faced similar problem just like him.
Abhay so proceeded to develop the pilot edition of the program all by himself. In addition, he employed to YCombinator’. But after working on it slowly and steadilyhe obtained incubated at IIT- Kanpur in February 2019.
“In MarchI launched the very first basic pilot version. We, nevertheless, saw a grip on it very early on, and found on both iOS and Android. Particularly when people tried to log into, but there were a few glitches originally. ”
The Ficting app thus went through revamping twice before launching the most recent version from November 2019. Abhay states, the new version includes more content and genres included.
From February 2020the program claims to have seen over 500 natural downloads. The program began getting fame and attention in a variety of events and contests.
Lately, it caught the attention of Tim Draper (another creation VC who invested in companies like Skype, Hotmail, Tesla, etc), since it emerged as one of those top-four winners from 50 startups that pitched person to Tim in Mumbai.
Today, Abhay includes a team of three beneath himwhich includes a material creator, programmer, and a techie.
The tales
The stories on the platform are made in the form of conversation fiction, where the readers will be reading text talks between two or more people with a legitimate story going on behind. The material has a variety of special effects such as audio and images, which is targeted at drawing on readers deeper into a story.
“We have developed an advanced way of storytelling for those who get distracted easily, and also for our readers who don’t have much time to read. This notion keeps the reader hooked to the story, making it engaging,” states Abhay.
Today, in the time of this coronavirus, the program has also curated stories especially linked to coronavirus (Covid-19), that goes with the title Mythbusters, and has other corona-related stories too. It’s aimed at breaking each of the myths linked to the virus, and the only source of advice has become the world health organisation (WHO), which in itself makes the material authentic and adds credibility.
There are 26 stories on the platform. Ficting launches stories every week, which can be written and curated from the team for now. It enables writers to push their material too.
The material is available in English, and will be accessible Hindi to reach people.
India has witnessed a rise in the consumption of reading devices, book apps, book gifting options, audiobooks, self-publishing platforms, etc.. Some of these include platforms like Storytel, Episodes, Choices, Yarn, Juggernaut, etc..
According to Statista, India’s e-book market will be worth $214 million by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 14.3 percent annually. However, Abhay says, the USP of Ficting is its content and method of storytelling.
“If you look at our competitors, they are selling every type of content, which includes erotica as well. This does not go along with our content values as we cater to spiritual, soft romantic, thriller, and recently added coronavirus related content, which in itself is highly unique,” says Abhay.
In April 2020, the app crossed 1,000 downloads organically without any marketing. According to Abhay, this was entirely through word of mouth and reference.
For now, the company is not generating any revenue, and is focussing on getting as many customers as possible. The team survives on the monthly stipend that Abhay receives from NTT Data as part of his fellowship. “We aspire to be pre-revenue initially to let users get to know our product in-depth,” says Abhay.
However, going forward, the company plans to add a freemium model where a user buys certain type of stories based on quality content, and the hyper contextual advertising targeted at the users.
The team is in talks with some popular authors as well.
“We will be taking it to the next level where these authors can partner with Ficting, and publish their own content on our app using own tools. ”
(Edited by Megha Reddy)
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