Shilpa Ahuja, Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Shilpa Ahuja Digital Media shares how long-term vision and innovation are still key to success post-pandemic
First of all, how are you and your Family carrying out in these COVID-19 Times?
Shilpa Ahuja:Covid-19 has been a difficult time for most businesses. While media hasn’t been as greatly impacted in regards to readership, the market has actually seen incredible losses in terms of advertising earnings. More and more organizations are finding it challenging to pay employee wages, not to mention have a marketing budget, which is why ad earnings are at an all-time low.
Inform us about you, your Career, how you Established Shilpa Ahuja Digital Media
Shilpa Ahuja:My love for composing started at the tender age of 7 when I started writing poetry. At 11, I released my first handcrafted publication and established a passion for art, creative writing and modifying. From there on, I began to make handmade magazines every year, gathering short articles from my classmates and modifying them, and then carried on to become the Editor of my college publication later too. Despite the fact that fashion, art and writing were constantly my interests, I first picked architecture as my career alternative. However, working for a few years in architecture and hotel job management made me recognize that it wasn’t helping me recognize my complete potential. There was constantly a lot I had wished to do, and I had actually currently operated in graphic and website design too.
After my wedding in 2014, I had to transfer to a new city (Chennai), where work opportunities in that field were restricted, and lastly, I started to think about other professions when the idea of starting a style blog pertained to me. My company started extremely naturally, from a tiny personal blog site that was ShilpaAhuja.com. Its readership soon grew, and I realized I had a lot of more ideas I might work on.
Traditional style magazines have actually always fixed a limit in between the style world “insiders” a.k.a. Stylish people and outsiders a.k.a. Those who need to discover fashion. Nevertheless, coming from a non-fashion background, I felt there was a gap in the market for a publication that catered more to the modern-day working lady’s practical style requires rather than additional fashionable high-maintenance stuff that a regular lady might neither pay for nor maintain. I was very excited about the concept of producing a fashion publication from a fashion “outsider’s” point of view. I developed ShilpaAhuja.com into a full-fledged digital magazine, and then much more– an entire resource for whatever fashion and lifestyle.
I also used my other interests like graphics creating, website design and art. For a layman, a shiny fashion publication seems like an attractive occupation including style shoots and attending style shows. However, as a media entrepreneur, I also need to see other geeky aspects of it, like web advancement and PHP scripting, UI/UX and CSS, big data analysis and insight mining, server management and optimization, SEO, etc., which uses up more of my time than any glamorous job!
We have dealt with some of the biggest brand names in style and lifestyle, consisting of Nike, Dior, SSense, M.A.C., GAP, Expedia, Nexa and more. The team grew too, and now we are a group of 17, and our media business reaches an audience of 250K users monthly in over 150 countries worldwide.
Afterwards, between 2018 and 2020, our company introduced 4 other distinct sites in education, interiors and people/society genres, making us Shilpa Ahuja Digital Media. I desire to make sites about topics that I have a genuine passion for, and have the first-hand experience in, so that the end-product can be transparent and genuinely important for our readers.
How does Shilpa Ahuja Digital Media Innovate?
Shilpa Ahuja:Content and media innovation– that’s what our business is everything about, and these are the two locations we innovate in. For material, we are constantly attempting brand-new methods of storytelling, brand-new web technologies and services. Here are a couple of examples:
Developments in Material:
Developments in Media Technologies:
How the Coronavirus Pandemic affects your Business and how are you coping?
Shilpa Ahuja:Shilpa Ahuja Digital Media has different media channels, and they have actually been impacted differently. While there has actually been little modification in readership and audience, we have actually seen a significant decrease in ad profits. Fashion and lifestyle space is doing even worse than in the past, while the education space is doing a little better.
Our major channel, ShilpaAhuja.com remains in the fashion and lifestyle space, whose readership suffered a drop this year, as checking out the most current style trends is not the first thing on individuals’s minds right now. So we needed to come up with content that’s pertinent in these times to bring the readership back up. Nevertheless, the competitors for lockdown-specific material is huge as significant media houses are also buying such content these days.
The style industry has been struck hard by the pandemic, which is a crucial advertiser for us. The significant blow our company has actually had to face is because style brands are barely marketing these days. In these months, we’ve temporarily moved our focus to brand-building and doing community engagement that will have long-lasting advantages for our start-up.
We have actually been doing Summertime Internship Programs to engage university student as their research studies have actually been affected due to lockdowns. This has helped us find talented young individuals who are enthusiastic about education, arts & & media, style and journalism. Pre-pandemic, our group was all Chennai-based; nevertheless, the lockdown & & work-from-home has blurred the differences in between regional and remote workers, forcing us to reconsider conventional hiring techniques. So we have actually likewise had the ability to hire staff members from all over the nation. This has assisted us re-build our group as we were not able to operate a full-time office.
During these times, we have extensively incorporated our company processes with cloud services in order to simplify cooperation within our group. And we have actually utilized video-conferencing to keep the workflow as typical as possible.
Did you need to make Challenging Choices, and what are the Lessons Learned?
Shilpa Ahuja:Thankfully, with a small group, we have not had to release any personnel, and we have actually remained in a much luckier position than lots of other organizations in terms of this. The biggest lesson learned is that for any start-up, it’s always good to think about organization viability and set a sustainable income stream before deeply purchasing any concept.
In the post-Covid digital world, the days of “releasing a service” and “overnight success” are over. These challenging times require slowly developing and testing your service or product with genuine customers so you can concentrate on real brand-building that will make your company sustainable in the long-lasting, something that can endure a disaster like this.
In the coming times, it’ll be really tough for copycat businesses to make it through. Start-ups require to have a genuine value proposition if they desire to survive. And one needs to understand that entrepreneurs will require more than hard work and an excellent concept to make a successful start-up.
How do you deal with Stress and Stress and anxiety?
Shilpa Ahuja:Personally, I work with repaired (however rather versatile) work-hours, and I have actually set up an “office” at home, where I attempt to imitate a correct workplace. I also attempt to keep weekends (at least partly) free and don’t encourage my staff members to work after-hours. This assists me keep my work and leisure different, which I feel is really essential to keeping psychological peace.
At the start of lockdown, my spouse and I started doing yoga every early morning, which has actually also helped us feel healthy and calm. Cooking and keeping up with hobbies like TELEVISION, art or learning French also helps me deal with stress. I attempt to spend a long time with nature every day. And often, just simply sharing my work troubles with my household or speaking about my day with my partner or mom assists me lower my anxiety.
How do you Project yourself and Shilpa Ahuja Digital Media in the Future?
Shilpa Ahuja:The days in which media ran behind closed doors are over. The customers of the internet-era desire an open discussion, thought-clarity, and brands with transparent motives. Web is now an open conversation online forum, and this changes the method media ought to operate. However, this doesn’t change the media’s function– to be . To make cultural & & intellectual contributions.
We at Shilpa Ahuja Digital Media think that well looked into and quality content can be the only sustainable growth strategy in a time where we are overloaded with click-bait material. Today, social networks platforms try to by projecting prejudiced content through their algorithms. Our company believe in serving our readers not just based upon what they are searching or what’s popular however likewise to make an effort to share viewpoints that may not be really popular.
We believe that media has the power (and the duty) to begin public conversations and educate readers so they can make educated viewpoints. We intend to provoke thought in the minds of our readers instead of just impart 3rd celebration viewpoints in their minds. We likewise desire to offer a chance to readers by creating an open platform, which helps them share their own viewpoints with a wider audience.
Who are your Rivals? And how do you plan to stay in the Game?
Shilpa Ahuja:Our competitors are different large media homes like Hearst, Conde Nast and The Times Group, and so on. In the media business, one needs to have a long-term view, as it’s difficult to expect exponential growth.
One of the methods we try to create market share is by being a niche-media home, as these bigger companies have a big majority market share in basic news and non-niche content. Being a startup in the media company, we have a long way to enter regards to producing a name for ourselves and being referred to as a credible source of news or material.