Josh Talks Success Story - An Indian Media Platform

Sarika Anand

Aug 10, 2021 — 9 min read

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Josh Talks.

Josh Talks, an online educational content company that uses personal storytelling to inspire viewers across India to achieve their true potential, achieved a break even year in 2017-2018 and monetized through advertisements and brand partnerships. Gurugram-based company which saw a loss of INR 10 lakhs in 2015 & INR 50 lakhs in 2016, is expecting a profit of INR 2 crore in this year.

Josh Talks Private Limited provides software solutions that offers media platform that covers a wide array of subjects with speakers from every conceivable background including entrepreneurship, public policy, sports, entertainment, and social initiatives. Josh Talks serves customers in India.

Lets unearth the Journey of Josh Talks since its inception in 2015. Also get a glance on the Business Model and Revenue Model of Josh Talks, Josh Talks Funding and Revenue Status, How Josh Talks started, its competitors and more...

Josh Talks - Company Highlights

Startup Name	Josh Talks
Headquarters	Gurugram, India
Industry	Media
Founder	Supriya Paul, Shobhit Banga
Founded	January 2015
Areas served	India
Total Funding	$1.5 Million
Revenue	~ INR 13.5 crore (FY20)
Website	joshtalks.com

Josh Talks - About and How it works?
Josh Talks - Founder and History
Josh Talks - Logo and its Meaning
Josh Talks - Mission
Josh Talks - Business Model
Josh Talks - Revenue and Growth
Josh Talks - Funding and Investors
Josh Talks - Challenges Faced
Josh Talks - Partnerships
Josh Talks - Competitors
Josh Talks - Achievements
Josh Talks - Future Plans
Josh Talks - FAQs

Josh Talks - About and How it works?

Josh Talks is an Indian media platform headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana which hosts content in 10 languages. Josh Talks was awarded with the National Media Award by Honorable President of India, Ram Nath Kovind. Josh Talks was also featured in Forbes magazine 'Asia 30 Under 30' list for 2018. By bringing out stories of people from diverse backgrounds including sports, stand up comedy, entrepreneurship, Bollywood, politics and more, Josh serves as a platform that caters to everyone’s interest.

The company's platform provides array of subjects with speakers from every conceivable background, including entrepreneurship, public policy, sports, entertainment and social initiatives and also creates content in the form of short talks and videos covering a range of stories from these sectors, enabling youth leaders and viewers to get inspired, help them grow as an individual and make them believe in themselves.

Josh Talks - Founder and History

Shobhit Banga & Supriya Paul | Founders, Josh Talks

The company was founded in 2015 by Shobhit Banga and Supriya Paul. Supriya Paul and Shobhit Banga met at a party while they were in college. She was in her third year at Delhi University’s Sri Venkateswara College, pursuing a bachelor’s in commerce; Shobhit was in the second year of his bachelor’s in business administration at the GD Goenka World Institute. The two got talking and realized a common passion for “motivating the student community by shaking things up”. They became friends and while still in college, co-founded their startup, Josh Talks in 2014, as a youth-centric platform to showcase the country’s most inspiring stories.

Josh Talks began its journey with conferences in 2014 in Delhi and Bengaluru. The speakers were social activists, business leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, academics, administrators, sportspeople, authors, musicians, actors and other artists.

The marquee Josh Talks LEAP 2016 took place in October, featuring 24 speakers and 5,000 attendees. In August 2017, the company has been on the road with monthly conferences in various tier 2 cities across India.

Josh Talks - Logo and its Meaning

Josh Talks' logo contains a microphone that indicates how Josh Talks offers media platform that covers a wide array of subjects with speakers from every conceivable background.

Josh Talks - Mission

Founded in 2015 by Supriya Paul and Shobhit Banga, Josh Talks is advancing its mission of unlocking human potential by building tools and services that enable the youth in Tier II & Tier III cities to do more with their life.

Josh Talks - Business Model

Its revenue model is currently divided into two folds - offline and online. A large part of the online revenue comes from advertising through Brand Partnerships & YouTube and the offline programs are usually co-created properties along with sponsors.

Josh Talks - Revenue and Growth

After five years of being in business, from running it with just a couple of interns to over 100 employees, across three offices in Gurugram and Bengaluru, the startup is set to clock a revenue of INR 13.5 crore in FY20

Innov8 Founder and CEO Dr Ritesh Malik was an early ‘angel’ for the company, having invested around INR 10 lakh in 2015. The money went into operational expenses. In 2017, the company raised INR 1.2 crore through angel investment from Freshworks’ Girish Mathrubootham, HCL’s Apoorva Chamaria, and Hero Corporation’s Rohit Chanana. This round helped the company roll out content in regional languages. Currently, Josh Talks is on the verge of closing a pre-Series A round of INR 10 crore.

Today, Josh Talks produces close to 2,000 talks a year, compared to the 200 it used to produce in the pre-pivot days. From INR 6 crore revenue in 2019, it is set to more than double its topline to INR 13.5 crore in 2020. The startup made a profit of INR 50 lakh last year and is well on track to continue the profitable streak. From 1.2 million subscribers last year, it touched six million this year. “The last 18-month period has been a period of extreme growth for us,” Supriya says. She said that she still remembers the day when Shobhit had to sell his bike to put together their first event in 2014 at Delhi’s Air Force Auditorium, because they did not have enough money.

Josh Talks - Funding and Investors

It is seed-funded by investors such as Ritesh Malik (Founder of Innov8), Sumit Ranka (Founder of Thinkpot) amongst other names in the Indian investor circuit.

Josh Talks has raised a total of $1.5M in funding over 2 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on 27 February, 2020 from a Seed round and pre-Series A funding round. The funding was led by New York-based Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF).

Date	Round	Amount	Investor
Feb 27, 2020	Seed Round	$1.5M	Media Development Investment Fund
Nov 16, 2017	Angel Round	-	-

Josh Talks - Partnerships

Josh Talks has partnered with several prominent entities such as Facebook, UNDP, UN Women, Edelweiss, and ITC for various campaigns and CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives. One of Josh Talks' major partners is Facebook with whom they conduct conferences, workshops & boot camps to encourage entrepreneurship in India. The company's content can be found on YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, JioSaavn amongst other online platforms.

Josh has covered over 1,000+ speakers with over 1.2 Million subscribers on YouTube and 999,000+ fans on Facebook, and receives 20 Million views monthly.

Josh Talks - Competitors

The top 10 competitors in Josh Talks' competitive set are:

TED Conferences
LLC
INKtalks
MS Talks India
YouTube
Dailymotion
Vimeo
Netflix
Hulu
SXSW
Vevo

Together they have raised over 13.7B between their estimated 52.5K employees.

Josh Talks - Challenges Faced

While speaking about the challenges faced by the company, Supriya Paul, the founder said, “Building a team to scale regional languages has been very difficult and Josh is still in the process of cracking it. Josh talks is currently managing a team of 75+ full time people from across 12 cities in India, and it gets tougher with each new person.

Another major challenge according to her has been understanding each language, as it's almost been like understanding a totally different country with different level of interests, aspirations and more. Getting the right team in place to build our product has been challenging as well since the founders come from a non-tech background.

Josh Talks - Achievements

Josh Talks channels have showcased more than 2000 stories in 10 vernacular languages, reaching 700 million worldwide. The first Josh Talks event was hosted in a living room and attended by less than 10 people. Over chai and samosas, the group watched a video together and discussed their takeaways from it. Josh Talks, a platform which would showcase stories to inspire the youth to do more and be more in their lives. Josh has evolved into an ecosystem of tools and products for the youth, particularly those belonging to Tier II and Tier III towns and cities, on a mission to unlock human potential.

Josh Talks - Future Plans

On an average, Josh Talks is getting about 30-40 M views each month across all its channels. Josh Talks has also reached out to over 150,000 people offline through its events in 30 different cities and workshops in over 800+ colleges.

A lot of the expansion is going to be in vernacular content as Josh Talks grows more in the languages that they are currently in and expand into new ones. They are also in the process of building a career mentorship platform for people from smaller towns and cities who have big aspirations but lack the right kind of direction to get them going.

Commenting on the market size & opportunity, Supriya mentioned, “Market size would be the entire youth population of India - 600Mn+ people currently. Opportunity in terms of revenue is the digital ad market of INR 12000+ crores.

Having worked meticulously throughout the last three years, the company broke even in a span of two years and is expecting a profit of INR 2 crore in this year. Within the next three years, the number of vernacular language users is expected to grow to 550 million and the aim is to build solutions that are affordable and accessible for all.

Josh Talks - FAQs

What is Josh Talks?

Who are the founders of Josh Talks?

Shobhit Banga and Supriya Paul are the founders of Josh Talks.

How Josh Talks earn money?

A large part of the online revenue for Josh Talks comes from advertising through Brand Partnerships & YouTube and the offline programs are usually co-created properties along with sponsors.

Who are Josh Talks' competitors?