Delhi-based media startup ScoopWhoop has been teething for a lead against the recently-launched BuzzFeed India. To fuel its efforts, Bharti Softbank, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank Corporation, has acquired 36.5 percent equity stake. This partnership will boost ScoopWhoop’s content creation efforts and establish stronger presence through BSB’s mobile-optimized distribution platform among Indian consumers.
ScoopWhoop closely follows the media model pioneered by BuzzFeed, in which editors publish content carefully designed to go viral among specific demographics of a broader readership, in hopes of luring in advertisers. In the case of ScoopWhoop, that demographic is almost uniformly domestic Indians. Cruise through the homepage and you’ll see pieces titled ‘15 Types Of Vellas We All Know’ and ‘This Video Will Piss Off Some Mumbaikars’ alongside the usual Jimmy Fallon clips.
Madhu Nori, BSB Portal Limited’s CEO said in a statement, “About a half of India’s population is under 25 years old and the use of social networks with smartphones is growing rapidly among this segment. As a result, media consumption patterns are rapidly evolving and this space is ready for disruption.”
Launched in August last year by Sattvik Mishra and Rishi Mukherjee, ScoopWhoop is on a mission to create and curate entertaining content relevant to Indian youth. It claims to clock in about 20 million monthly page views monthly and eight million monthly unique versions.
Apart from BuzzFeed India, ScoopWhoop also has to compete with few homegrown entertainment sites such as Indiatimes’ QuickStir, StoryPick, TheNextMeme, and NDTV Offbeat.
Editing by Josh Horwitz
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