QuirkyByte Thrives on Witty Analyses of Fictional Characters from Movies and Television Series The company has witnessed a growth of 150 per cent YoY to a turnover of Rs 6.4 crore.It has also increased its audience size across social media channels to 6 million

Blenders Pride Reserve Collection presented Entrepreneur India's 35Under35 2020 list which included some leading names from the field of entrepreneurship and Aditya Goel made it to the coveted list.

Little did Aditya Goel know that writing a blog would lead him to start his own media company.When television and movies became his only escape while on a prolong bed rest due to his medical situation, Goel not only watched a lot of content but also started blogging about them. "After a year or so, my blog gained major attraction and acceptance among fans, and eventually its growing interest turned the blog into a company," he recalls.

Unmatched quality is its biggest USP, claims Goel. The company has witnessed a growth of 150 per cent YoY to a turnover of Rs 6.4 crore. It has also increased its audience size across social media channels to 6 million, and is generating more than 12 million video views and web visits weekly on its website and social media platforms. The business model involves earning from advertisements, and it has served major ad exchanges like Doubleclick from Google, Taboola, Media.net and Facebook Audience Network.

QuirkyByte prides itself on innovative content curation and communication style. Talking about the USP of his start-up venture, Goel mentions, "From management to writer to editors, everyone is such a movie buff that when we collaborate for work, we take care of every nitty gritty of our content to resonate better with our audience."

The funding journey of QuirkyByte started in May 2015 with $31 as the cost of setting up its website. "I started it with loan from friends and family but have never raised money for equity exchange. Incubators were giving seed money for small equity exchange but I was afraid that this might not work out, so I avoided putting my reputation at stake by losing someone's money. I first wanted to make sure I reach break-even with organic growth and later look into inorganic growth," he shares.

With an intention to raise not only funds but also experience, Goel reveals, "This is a project I started from scratch.If I will ever seek, I will seek investment only from some entertainment industry baron who just doesn't want to infuse his money but also his knowledge."

QuirkyByte's journey to attaining break-even was full of anxieties and euphoric movements. All that Goel has imbibed over the years is the mantra that "The only constant in life is change'.Whatever is effective today might not be effective tomorrow; a person needs constantly to change to survive and thrive.

As SoMoLo model is turning out to be successful for many technology-enabled products, QuirkyByte is also aligning its initiatives to fit this paradigm."We are expanding our social media reach on multiple platforms besides investing heavily on our mobile app and AI driven recommendation engine for a personalized user experience. Lastly for localization, we have started focusing on quality India-centric content as well; we now aim to cover news bytes from both international and national OTTs," he concludes.

(This article was first published in the February 2020 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)