These colleagues stop Facebook to begin YouTube for audio, discover early success

“You can think of Headfone as a YouTube for audio,” says Pratham Khandelwal, co-founder and CEO of the audio storytelling platform he launched with former colleague Yogesh Sharma after quitting his job at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters.
“Just like YouTube, you can create content on the Headfone app and distribute them as a channel or personal profile,” Khandelwal tells indianexpress.com, including that originally, the corporate did experiment with codecs like audiobooks and podcasts however quickly realised that Indian customers need to take heed to audio dramas throughout genres. Although the premium section is likely to be concerned with knowledge-based content material, the plenty are extra into fictional tales, he elaborates. “We are focusing on the stories, but fictional stories that can be told in the audio drama format, or narrative storytelling.”
But Khandelwal, in his early 30s, is evident he doesn’t need to be a manufacturing home; the identical strategy that differentiates YouTube from Netflix. “We at times do experiments with original content…but the broader vision is that we want to empower the creators so that we can have a diverse and scalable content repository for listeners to listen to that content.”
Graduates from the Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad (IIIT-A), each Khandelwal and Sharma had a typical imaginative and prescient to create an audio platform that connects storytellers and listeners. For now, the audio content material on the app is free, whether or not it’s internet hosting, creating, listening or distributing. “We are doing some early experiments around monetisation but that would be more on listening to premium content,” he provides.
The Headfone app is totally different from Audible or Clubhouse. (Image credit score: Headfone)
Khandelwal says 60 per cent of Headfone’s customers come from tier-2 cities, 30 per cent from tier-1 cities and the remaining ones are from tier-3 and tier-4 cities. Though Khandelwal has no entry to the laborious information, his hunch is that customers who’re utilizing his app are those that additionally use YouTube greater than Netflix or Amazon Prime Video.
Time spent on the Headfone app has considerably elevated previously few months and customers now spend a mean of 45 minutes on the app. But the main focus is to retain customers and therefore Khandelwal says: “We are making our content repository very deep.” Previously you’ll discover each type of content material on the Headfone app however now the technique is to squarely give attention to the audio content material that may enchantment to the plenty when it comes to advertising and marketing and our narrative.
To run a platform like this, Khandelwal says there’s a have to experiment with the content material. While content material creators and storytellers are free to make their content material, the three-person in-house crew units the tone that resonates with the customers. In a means, this crew helps the content material creators determine what sort of content material ought to work on the platform.
“If people are interested in horror stories…we then try it out and discuss should we create a single episode horror story or a series and if we are creating a series then what should be the length of the episode and if the length of the episode we have finalised then what should be the language; if it is in Hindi, then it should be a proper Hindi or with a dialect like Bihari or Marwari,” he explains. The common size of an audio drama episode on the Headfone app is seven to 10 minutes.
Since the person base that listens to the audio tales on the Headfone app prefers Hindi or their most well-liked mom tongue, Khandelwal could be very a lot centered on growing the content material accessible on the app in vernacular languages. He says 25 per cent of the content material one can find on the Headfone app is in English however simply 2 per cent of customers listens to that content material. “I have found that most of the English language content creators, primarily from Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, create content in a podcast format and that too in the knowledge segment which isn’t really what the mass market is looking to consume.”
The Headfone app has a majority of customers in tier-2 cities of India. (Image credit score: Headfone)
The core demographics of Headfone viewers are principally younger customers. In truth, 60 to 70 per cent of customers are under the age of 24 years and the key chunk of lively customers who take heed to the audio content material on the app fall within the 18 to twenty-eight years bracket.
With the rise of Clubhouse and Discord, the favored audio platform for players, the dialog is across the uptake of audio and a few even say that is the way forward for social media. “Audio is right in the middle of this spectrum, where the information is being pushed to your ears,” he says. “You can still apply your imaginative power or your brain to create characters,” maybe the rationale why Khandelwal is betting on the audio drama over audiobooks. “An audiobook gives very little information, exactly like the book; it’s like someone is reading a book for you.”
“But audio drama is very different; you can imagine the whole environment, the sound effects, and still you can be the hero, you can be the character in that whole movie,” he says, explaining why audio is a greater format to eat intimate content material over video.
The Headfone app has now been downloaded 6 million occasions on the Google Play Store, although that quantity is steadily rising Khandelwal feels that loads of Android customers aren’t conscious of this app or every other platform that focuses on audio-only content material. The app is lacking on iOS for now, however the plan is to launch it sooner or later to get extra customers onboard.
While the Headfone app is pitched for its audio dramas, Khandelwal does have plans so as to add the weather of interactive audio to the platform, very like what Clubhouse has accomplished. The firm is in talks with comedians, influencers and even these story-tellers who made it huge on the Headfone app. But the first focus will likely be on growing the depth within the audio drama class, primarily in Horror, thriller and suspense genres.
The Bangaluru-based startup, which has a ten member crew, plans to boost recent capital within the coming months. For now, Khandelwal’s precedence is to retain present customers and in addition the way to enhance the standard of the content material on the platform in order that they take heed to the audio dramas usually, or each second day.