We don’t broadcast, we “nano-cast”: Shafi Saxena, News Republic

News Republic’s Chief brand Officer, Shafi Saxena, is confident about its future in India. She is also happy about the app’s performance. In a candid conversation with exchange4media, she speaks about the revenue model and why they don’t believe in promotion. Excerpts:

It’s been more than six months, how has News Republic evolved over this period?

We are very pleased with how we have evolved, and when we were here last, I received lots of questions about News Republic. Questions such as how we are going to serve the non English market and I am very proud to say we now have seven Indian languages on the news app. The other thing, while coming to India, made us realize specially is how the world has become multilingual. Now on News Republic, you can get your news feeds in the same edition, not only in English or Hindi but many languages of your choice. We have added some terrific content local content.

There are tough competitors in the market. What is your strategy to get maximum market share?

We really don’t think news as a zero-sum game. We operate with non-zero mindset. A robust news media ecosystem in any country is fundamental for both social health and good governance. We welcome all and any strong competitor in the market place as long as all of us together keep people focus in conversations and talk about issues that truly matter; that is our mission. Our vision is people who know better do better, so our mission is to provide information with purpose in case and all we trying to do is start conversation with the issues that matter and as long as other media organisations are doing it as well we will end up with a better planet.

Readers in today’s world consume media in a whole world of places. No one is locked down in a single zip code and brand, our readers will find us.

What are your marketing strategies, what is News Republic doing to stay relevant in India?

First and foremost, we don’t do marketing that’s not our mindset. What we do provide is an incredibly meaningful product. We reach out and connect with constituencies and communities that matter and we do it in a way that is a very respectful to a robust ecosystem so unlike some competitors, we never scrape content, we do full licence content and do full revenue sharing as it’s better for the health of the media.

Secondly, we are doing a lot of work with student communities, we are sponsoring events in IITs and other universities, and we are the ones going to ramp progress in truly radical as yet unforeseen ways.

But still, what is the reason behind not promoting News Republic?

Because there is so much content, people get around eight thousand marketing messages. I think just a TV ad doesn’t do what it used do at a point, it just doesn’t. People hide from content today, if you deliver incredible and meaningful content people will seek it out.

 That’s how the equation has changed we don’t broadcast we “nano-cast” and what we do is we “nano-cast” each individual in a very hyper contextual in real time in a personalised way. That’s why our stickiness factor is very high. If you look at the quality of our ecosystem and fluidity of our interface is what we chose to focus on rather than television ads.

Tell us something about your business model?

Our business model is twofold. The bulk is ad revenue generated and that has been growing especially since ad dollars started shifting to digital and mobile. In India, next month we have something like 420 million consumers using internet,  and bulk of India’s consumer are on mobile and we are born mobile, so bulk revenue comes with ad revenue and we share that with all our content partners.

Where do you see News Republic in coming few years?

I would like to say that India is not currently one of our top countries as we have just launched and our top countries are in Europe, China and Taiwan. I think, I foresee India is being one of our leading countries in the next three years.