ScoopWhoop losses surge over 150% to Rs6.5 crore in FY16
2 min read 19 Jan 2017, 07:14 PM ISTOnline media start-up ScoopWhoop's revenues jumped three-fold to nearly Rs10 crore in 2015-16
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New Delhi: Losses at digital media start-up ScoopWhoop Media Pvt. Ltd soared over 150% to Rs6.48 crore in the fiscal year ended March 2016 from a year ago, even as revenues jumped three-fold to nearly Rs10 crore, according to a company filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).
During the period, the company invested in scaling video production capabilities and hired across editorial and business-to-business (B2B) marketing roles in a bid to increase traffic and sign up more clients for branded content, said Sattvik Mishra, co-founder and chief executive officer of ScoopWhoop Media Pvt. Ltd.
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Total expenditure during the period was Rs16 crore, up from Rs5.2 crore a year ago.
Delhi-based ScoopWhoop operates three internet properties: an entertainment and news portal ScoopWhoop.com, women-centric content website Vagabomb.com and Hindi-content publisher Gazabpost.com. The venture is backed by Kalaari Capital and Bharti SoftBank, a joint venture between telecom giant Bharti Enterprises and Japan’s Softbank Corp.
The company generates revenue from display ads and native advertising.
The rise in revenues indicate higher corporate spending on digital advertising, a trend seen across digital media companies. The surge is led by video content, more of which is now produced than ever before, which helps publishers cut bigger brand deals.
“What we have seen is that audiences consume video content more, so anyway it makes sense to engage in the format that they like and video is a clear winner. And what we have seen is that brands also want to invest in video content and you are able to tell a better brand story in the video format compared to text," said Mishra.
The company has expanded its video team from three-four members in January 2016 to 40 members, while videos content generated higher traffic.
“Traffic has gone up 100% from last year. From 15 million unique users to 30 million unique users today and this includes all the three properties: ScoopWhoop, Vagabomb and Gazabpost," said Mishra.
The company, Mishra claims, registers 380 million engagements each month, and is behind only timesofindia.indiatimes.com and ndtv.com. Engagements denote the number of times the content was consumed across platforms.
ScoopWhoop has also created a dedicated marketing team to engage brands for its products including both long- and short-format videos, articles and branded campaigns that have a mix of both. The company hired a chief strategy officer and conducted workshops with companies such as ITC Ltd and Flipkart, two of the biggest spenders on digital advertising.
ScoopWhoop is changing from being a content creator to providing advertising solutions to brands. According to Mishra, it is creating a more sophisticated dashboard for clients running advertising campaigns on ScoopWhoop that will help them target users better.
The company also plans to add content in at least 10 regional languages during 2017-18.
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