 With the rise of on-demand content, how will it change the way content is created? So just want to clarify certain things at the beginning. We'll probably have an audience around right at the end, which will be for about three to four minutes where you can ask your questions. The good part about this panel discussion is that all the panelists over here are very civil, so there aren't isn't going to be any water being thrown on stage like you see on certain hyperventilating news anchors on stage. To start off it, I'm going to start from the extreme right. Just two and a half minutes each of you about your journey, how you really started off so that the audience gets a feel of exactly who you are and how you started off. Yeah. Hello. Yeah. So everyone, good afternoon. I know you guys are hungry, but I won't be taking a lot of time. So firstly, I'm Chandralekha. I create content around finance. So I'm a finance influencer. You can call that. And I have over half a million followers. I love using the word million and I can use it right now. Yeah. So coming to my journey, it is a little weird right now because I am juggling between my corporate life and also the content creation life. Yes. Right now I also work at a big four and I also simultaneously, you know, do my content creation in the weekends. So how did it all start? As always, we all have this point where we want to show what we learn to others, right? So that's when my journey started. So way back in 2020, you know, I was completing my certifications in finance. So I am a CMA and a CIA both when that was the time I had a lot of, you know, free time. And that's when I decided to get into trading, which no one should be actually doing at the first stage. But I did it and I lost a lot of money because I just didn't get into derivative. I mean, I just didn't get into stock market trading. I got into derivatives. Okay. And derivatives as a subject is very complex and it's very easy to lose money. And I lost money as any beginner trader. Okay. And that's when I realized, Oh my God, what am I doing? I'm a learned person. If I'm not putting the research and trying to understand what is it, then who else will? Right. So that's when I sat, I sat for hours. I, you know, I finally decoded how to do option selling. And then it took me, it took me one year to get this money back that I lost in a month. Okay. So that's how bad it was. But then I learned this art of option selling and I thought, okay, I'll, I'll, you know, actually show this to my audience. And that's when I started my YouTube channel and I was just showing how people can do option selling. But that's when I also entered my corporate life. Now long form creation takes a lot of time. I can't keep teaching for hours together or minutes together and edit them and then post them. I didn't have that luxury of time. So that's when one of my friends texted, you know, there's something called reels. Okay. I was very bad in using Instagram, even until, you know, I can say even until last, I mean, it's been one and a half years since I started content creation. But two years ago, I did not even know the difference between reel and story. That's how bad I was in using Instagram. Then one of my friends texted and, you know, he was like, you know, why don't you do reels? And I thought, okay, it's very interesting. But I was so bad in understanding how all of this works that I started teaching corporate finance on Instagram page, which is so boring, like who would even be listening to it, right? And then later understood that no, this is not what people want because majority of audience don't want this. They want hacks. They want personal finance hacks. They want to know how to save money, you know, how to grow their money. This is the main interest. And that's when I started personal finance content creation on Instagram. So I also moved from long form to short form, but long form, I didn't even stick to it for a month. I immediately moved to short form. And here I am juggling between my corporate life and this both, but I love doing both of them. And so it is sustainable for me right now, at least at the moment. Three and a half minutes. Can we please have a round of applause for her for sticking to the time? It is something which needs to be appreciated. Now we're going to move on to Diksha. And I just want to say if I cut anybody short, it is nothing personal. The reason I'm saying this is because today is the one year anniversary of the Oscars. We all know what happened last year with Will Smith. Diksha. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for having me here. I'm a fitness content creator and an entrepreneur. And my journey started way back around seven years back. Me posting on Instagram was a journey of, it was a process of self appreciation. I was struggling with weight issues after my child. I was struggling with healthy shoes like PCOS and thyroid. And of course, going through a lot of psychological problems also because of the way I used to look. And that's when I decided I have to start my fitness journey. This is for my betterment, for my better health. And the Instagram posting started as the process of self appreciation. I started, you know, whatever I enjoyed. See, I've lost two KGs. I've lost five KGs. I used to post my transformation pictures, workout videos and everything. And a lot of women came along who were probably sailing in the same boat at that time, just like me, after a child was going through struggles with weight and body image issues. And that's how the journey of a content creator started. In a year's time, I won Mrs. India as a second runner up. And although I got a lot of, you know, different projects into modeling segment and acting segment, but I was very sure I want to do something in fitness. And that's how this entire journey of, you know, a homemaker who just wanted to post her day to day activity to a legit content creator and an expert. And within, you know, only intention was to help people. Today, I have trained approximately 50,000 individuals across the globe. I've helped them with nutrition and exercise both. And as a company and as a content creator, we try to maintain that balance to earn money and to share the knowledge that I have. And I can share with the audience, which is, you know, actually useful for them. Thank you so much. In short, she's basically 20 times fitter than me. Okay, moving on to Anushka. Hello. Yeah, it's working. First of all, good afternoon. Good morning to everyone. And I promised I'll keep it short. And thanks a lot for having me as well. I'm Anushka Rathod. I'm a finance content creator. And I have over 1.5 million followers across platforms. So I'll give you a brief of what happened is April 2020, I was supposed to leave for Duke University for my masters. Early March 2020, I left my job for that. And late March 2020, our prime minister announced the lockdown. So what happened was I was out of a job in the middle of the pandemic. And say two, three months, I thought, you know what, I'll just make Dalgona coffee and leave for my masters. But two months became three months, three months, three months became four months. And my university said, you know what, don't come do it online. And I said, I'm not going to do it online. So I was figuring out what to do. No one was hiring in finance. And that is where a lot of my friends also had had free time. And they were asking Manushka where to invest. I said, just Google it. Or they're like a lot of YouTube videos, which you can watch for it. And they said, they're just too long and boring. I want something which is quick. And that's what I'm coming to you. And that is where I got the insight that people, there's a huge gap in this industry where people want relatable, engaging short form finance content, which they understand. And which is to the point. And that is how I started. I was the first finance content creator in the short form space. And I think that's treated me very well over the last two years. So yeah, that's how I started. Actually, my friends sent Manushka's reel as well, you know, even that motivated me to start. Now next we have Ayush. Ayush is, he's a podcast. He's also the founder of Owled. I do not know the form, the full form of Owled sounds like a secret organization over to you. Crazy. I hope people haven't dosed off. So Tuesday morning, I can see half of the crowd on their phones. But my story wasn't as inspirational. I started making videos because I wanted to impress a girl. This is back when I was 13. So don't really have an exciting story filled with insights. But I was 13 years old when I made my first video online. That's when I started my first venture online as well, where we had a couple of blogs and we started making videos around technology, just like our friend Tejas who was on the panel before us. But that was 13 years ago. Now I run Owled. Owled is a media network of three companies. We help brands like Disney Plus, Cred, Grow and a lot of other brands with a bunch of things. We have a host of services. I don't like the word agency, but yes, we are an agency and we are a 360 degree agency helping brands with brand and marketing, ad films, video production, creator management, influencer marketing. There are tons of services that we do. So that's what I do apart from running the company. I'm a podcaster. I also try to create content getting inspired by all these ladies and a lot of other content creators who do such an incredible job. My content is around business and marketing. So that's what I do. Right. Now that the introductions are done, it's free for all amongst the four of you. Okay. Of course, you don't throw mics at each other at all. But starting off with how do you compete for attention in an ever-crowding influencer space? Everybody is becoming an influencer nowadays. There are people who you don't know existed, who are influencers. I mean, so many of you over here, the influencers here, the influencers here, are established people with half a million, million, four million followers. I mean, I think Neha has what, 1.6 million, which is basically 1.4 million followers more than I have, which is very sad. But let's move on. So how do you compete in such an environment? Okay. So as Mr. Roshan said, choice is a fundamental right. And the choice of your audience is always changing. It's very dynamic. It's just that you get the hold of what your audience actually want to see here and learn. So if you get the tap of it, and it's not going to work all the time, it takes time to get that idea. But then you have to completely be involved in the process of understanding what your audience exactly want to see, what is trending, and how this is going to work in near few months or few weeks. So content creation, yes, you have to have your niche. But then in that niche, that dynamism is always there, and you need to learn and grow with it. So my take on this would be in addition to what actually Roshan spoke. Everybody has to identify this mode, right? So right now we have maybe 100 finfluences. Tomorrow there might be 200, 500. But each of us should identify our mode, okay? We should know why our audience are sticking to us. So it's going to get more and more difficult, but as long as you're going to distinguish yourself from the rest of the creators in some or the other way where audience are going to feel, huh, I want to follow her. I want to listen to her speak every single day. You know, that's the kind of traction that you need from your audience. And if you can crack that out and be relevant over the years by bringing new and new things down the line and growing your distribution, I feel that's the only way to be sustainable. I follow very simple three-step framework. First is pick a niche, stick to it, right? That's a very basic one. Second is always have something apart from content creation that backs up that content. I see a lot of personally, I don't resonate with creators who create content about a topic that they personally don't practice, right? So content is a lot about preaching online, right? So whatever you're preaching, make sure you're practicing one part of it. You know, apart from content, right? And I feel today creating content, while it is a very, very difficult job, you can always find time to do something else, delegate a couple of things because the kind of money that content creators are making is also very significant. Third is content creation in itself is very simple. It's either education or entertainment or something in the middle, right? If you can combine education and entertainment, which is value or entertainment in your content, you have a very good mix, right? And these three together, just you pick any creator and backtrack and decode their journey, you will find these three, like a mix of these three. So I think if you can curate this very carefully, you'll have a very good mix of you as a content creator. Well said. But I have a different view is don't compete for attention and I don't compete for attention because it's a commodity and at the end of the day, if it's not with you, we'll go to someone else. What I do is I compete for engagement. I have identified the kind of audience I want and who I am creating content for. And instead of me chasing them, I let the algorithm do the work of them coming to me. What happens this way is that I am not worried if there are thousand more finfluences tomorrow because there's only going to be me, one Anushka Rathod. And like Roshan said, attention is a commodity but engagement, not so. How many creators can solve for engagement? And at the end of the day, as a creator, you're creating a community and brands come to you for that community. Brands don't come to you for attention and even if they do, tomorrow they'll go to someone else. So optimize for engagement and that's what exactly what I do. The algorithm, after this session, I've been searching it for the last five years. What are the individual quirks which each of you use in your content to draw in people or to engage people? And we have exactly seven minutes left. So let's do it according to that. Frankly speaking, I would love to chat for half an hour but there are type constraints and there is lunch, right? Okay, that was a stupid joke. Please continue. Should I start? So as I said, my moment is analysis and giving honest analysis to the people, which is unique to me because I sit on excel sheets, I work and then with my experience, I tell the audience, you know, this is this. So what's happening here is it's building a trust. You're doing something that's not else available so people are, you know, building trust with you. They're believing your content and that's how I try to engage people and definitely there are other things as well. For example, the way the way it is presented, the execution skills matter, the way you're entertaining them matters and also your, you know, final CTA, like what do you want your audience to do after they watch the video? Do you want them to come back tomorrow or is this the last video you're doing? So it's very important to hit that point. So for me, there are just two metrics that I rely on, especially on Instagram and that is save and share because finance being a content can be rewatched multiple times to understand something. Even fitness, you know, people want to look at exercises again and again. So what are they going to do? They're going to save it. But coming to finance, it's similar as well. People are going to save it and share it. And these are the two metrics I track on to, you know, decode this market. So for me, I'll continue what my dear friend said here. Save and share. If that is hitting the number that I want in my particular, you know, post, this is that's what I want. That's that's the engagement for me because if I'm posting a fitness video, I want my consumer to watch it, share it, and that's how it's going to bring the business to me. Secondly, I definitely use the tools that are provided on the platform. I ask my audience, I do polls, I, you know, give them a topic and tell them, you know, what do you want me to, you know, present about the same, I do lives and interact. So that relationship building that relatability has really worked for me to create my own small community of very trustworthy audience. So that worked for me, that analysis, research all comes hand in hand understanding what my audience wants to know and consumer is a king for me. So yeah, that works. Awesome. I how I keep my content fresh is by being myself. I put out four videos every week and I've been doing it for the last two years. And when you are putting yourself out there so much, you can't be someone who you're not. So I have realized as a person, I can't act to save my life. I am not funny and I stick to that. I don't try to act also in my meals. But what I'm really good at is research. So what I have done is create a whole system and framework where every week you are going to get four new content topics, which is not there anywhere else on Instagram, on social media. And I'm going to present it in a very high production way, in a very quick snackable way, but which is something also which is trustable and gives you complete information. So that is the mode I've created for myself, extremely high researched content and four new topics every week. Wow. I think they have already covered most of the topics. I'll speak from it more from when we create videos for brands because a good part of my chunk is working without where we end up working with tons of different kinds of brands. I started yesterday morning with a baby care company's meeting and ended my day with an automobile company's meeting. And I think one thing which I saw in a lot of agencies and content studios I was missing is most marketeers. I mean, we have Roshan Saria, right? I mean he has been part of the agency culture for a very long time. Most marketeers fail to understand the business implication of marketing. For them, marketing is probably just making people laugh for 15 seconds or maybe just grabbing their attention for 15 seconds. But what next? Most people forget that a company puts in marketing dollars to get some kind of result, right? That result could be long-term and that long-term result is what we like to call branding and could be short-term, which we like to call marketing. Regardless, you have to be extremely good at picking insights of the user. So there are two things that we do quite often. A, whenever we work with a brand, right? We try to understand their business model first, then their marketing goals. Second, there is always deep surveys that we try to do. Now when I say deep surveys, of course we don't run thousands of, of course now Google allows you to run like mass surveys, but whenever you do any kind of activity online, asking people what do they want, what resonates with them is really important. Now the same can be implemented in content creation as well, right? Anushka mentioned the angle of community. Your community that engages with you is extremely important and half of the times they are the ones who will tell you what to do next, what to do to make sure you, you know, what, what should you do to make sure that you stay relevant in the content creation era. So I think cut, cut the noise, just stick to what the audience wants at, at this given point. If the audience in 2020 was demanding short form, then instead of debating long form versus short form, just hop onto the long, hop onto the short form era. So that's, that's, these are some two, three things that we try to do. I think that's a, that's a point which keeps coming up. Take ideas from the feedback, from the comment section, even the panel before we heard that, even you guys are saying that, but thanks a lot. I must definitely, we need to put our hands together for all these four panelists because they have stuck to their points in a very concise manner. They've said everything. Right? I meant applause. Thank you.