EP21: {Girish of Magzter} on 55 million app downloads and the business of digital magazines and newspapers

Stars & Startups

EP21: 55 million app downloads, business of magazines & newspapers and starting with apps early {Girish Ramdas, Co-founder & CEO of Magzter}

If you’ve had a smart phone since early days you’d likely recognise Magzter. Along with Zinio they were they apps that you could find your favourite magazines from across the world to access and read. They have over 55 million downloads of their apps and Girish speaks off how they hit 1 million downloads a months recently and likely greater than normal downloads due to COVID. On the episode I speak with Girish Ramdas, the CEO of Magzter. We have an unhinged conversation about Magzter, their successes, the journey of starting and scaling.

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Magzter is hiring! Do check them out.

Founded in 2011, by C.R. Venkatesh, Girish Ramdas & Vijayakumar Radhakrishnan. Magzter has raised a total of US$ 13M from investors including the Singapore Press Holdings & Kalaari Capital.

This episode on YouTube .

Timeline:

02:27 - Inspiration for Magzter

03:55 - App businesses in early '10s

05:42 - Everyone had a Magzter app

07:17 - The reading destination

08:38 - Deprioritizing products & choosing a path

11:12 - Achieving product market fit after 4-5 years (2015)

11:47 - Newspapers leading to max DAUs; shift in habit

14:14 - National gold medals in rifle shooting & staying active

18:02 - Running a marathon

21:42 - Yogic practice

25:20 - Operating from NYC

26:22 - B2B adoption & new use cases

32:28 - Changing interaction

35:27 - Discovering the Zone use case

37:12 - COVID Baby

38:52 - “Trending” content in education?

40:37 - Academic journals

43:37 - 1 Million download a month, 50% growth in May

43:42 - Retention

45:37 - Splitting the pie

47:27 - User Generated Content

49:37 - Savings using Magzter

50:32 - Form factor

55:12 - Content to Commerce via Magzter

57:53 - Services Business & managing that business

1:03:42 -Trap of being in the services businesses

1:05:02 - Hardware play, moving into new verticals

1:08:49 - Raising money & becoming cashflow positive

1:12:49 - Hiring