ScoopWhoop chalks out plan for organic growth, eyes vernacular

From earning and retaining the title of the viral content platform to becoming a choice of brands for content marketing, ScoopWhoop is preparing for its next phase of growth. In an exclusive conversation with BuzzInContent.com, Sattvik Mishra and Rishi Pratim Mukherjee, founders of the six-year-old youth-centric platform, revealed a series of initiatives being undertaken by ScoopWhoop.

Sattvik Mishra

“We are looking at expanding into multilingual content. We are already doing great in Hindi with ScoopWhoop Hindi. A substantial part of our user base in Hindi belongs to tier-II and tier-III towns. We are present on new-age platforms such as Helo and ShareChat. Apart from this, we continue focussing on our non-fiction video programming with ‘Ok Tested’ (new-age experiences, trials etc.) and ‘Unscripted’ (new age vox pops, interviews with actors and politicians — Townhall and Off The Record — a fresh take on interviews for discerning millennials),” said Mishra and Mukherjee.

Sensing the importance of regional in securing organic growth, ScoopWhoop will add Tamil and Bengali content soon.

However, the platform is focusing more on how languages are 'spoken' especially since video will play a huge role in its growth. Rather than choosing one or the other, ScoopWhoop’s strategy is to create content that is Regional+English (case in point is the main ScoopWhoop YouTube channel that consists of primarily Hinglish content).

As the platform is upping its ante in the vernacular content, the founders believe the content in regional languages needs to be relatable, informative and entertaining and a healthy combination of these will get the audience hooked to the content.

Additionally, the programming for ScoopWhoop's YouTube channel now focuses entirely on comedy sketches on topics affecting millennials.

“We've adopted a zany, humorous tonality that sets us apart from the rest of the competition when it comes to making a slice-of-life videos. We're collaborating with other popular YouTubers in order to maximise video reach and gain newer audiences,” the founders said.

Expanding the horizon of its coverage, the platforms have increased focussing on beats such as tech, gaming, health and fitness through video channel as well.

ScoopWhoop’s three platforms — ScoopWhoop.com, women-centric content website Vagabomb.com and Hindi-content publisher ScoopWhoop Hindi — have combined a strength of one million subscribers on Instagram, three million subscribers on YouTube with an average retention of 70% on video content.

Rishi Pratim Mukherjee

Through its content, ScoopWhoop also helps brands fetch sales leads along with gaining brand love, recall and affinity, said Mishra and Mukherjee. “We’ve had some success in this regard with campaigns for Brand Factory last year where our content converted into sales. Brands are certainly understanding the value of content more now and they expect to see measurable returns. At ScoopWhoop, we regularly invest in lift studies and other tools to prove the efficacy of the content.”