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Sonesh Jain

Creating the Creator Economy @ Exly | Entrepreneur & Artist | IIT R | WheelsEye

Sonesh Jain is the Chief Strategy Officer at Exly, a role he has held since late 2023. He is recognized as a serial entrepreneur with a strong background in building effective teams and driving strategic initiatives. His educational credentials include a degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, which underscores his technical and analytical expertise.

Before joining Exly, Sonesh Jain had various entrepreneurial ventures, showcasing his versatility and commitment to fostering innovation within the startup ecosystem. His LinkedIn profile indicates that he is passionate about creating opportunities in the creator economy, which aligns with Exly's mission to empower creators and freelancers.

In addition to his professional endeavors, Sonesh is active on social media, where he shares insights related to entrepreneurship, strategy, and personal growth.

Highlights

Aug 29 · linkedin

Answer 👇

I read 15+ reports on Creator Economy including the one's by Kalaari Capital, Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, Forbes, CNBC-TV18 & Tanmay Bhat

And I can say that we don't know in-depth about the Creator Economy! Most reports have this in common:

  • Repurposed versions of one another
  • Projections based on creators with a min follower count
  • Argue that brand Deals are the biggest source of income

I don't think it fits. And I am happy to be corrected. But I thought let me prove it by asking this simple question I posted.

(Alert: The answer is 100 words away)

To make it objective, pick any metric of your choice - Views, subscribers, engagement, revenue etc, and my good guess is that, despite the data being public, no one will be able to answer.

And my aaa-argument is that if we don't know the name of the most successful creator from India and his story, then we're definitely not going to care about the long tail of creators that are silently building value around their specific niche.

By now you may have a name and a metric in mind. Think?

Let's be honest, you didn't think that it is Vinoth Chandar or his channel ChuChu TV.

Some numbers:

  • 14th Most followed YT Channel in the world - 92Mn Subscribers
  • 19th most viewed YT Channel in the world - 53Bn Views

While studying BCA at University of Madras in 2001, Vinoth started his own boutique agency and was providing services like digital marketing and web development, in an emerging IT driven economy.

Soon, this journey evolved into love for Photography, Videography & Game Designing, and more or less became an integral part of the services his agency was providing.

Just 11 years ago in 2013, he decided to create an animation video for his toddler daughter, basically a nursery rhyme, made with love by a father for his daughter. He ended up uploading this rhyme on Youtube, and amassed 300k views in no time.

And there has been no looking back after that. Over the last 11 years, the channel has silently grown to 92Mn subscribers. But that's not the interesting part. The way Vinoth is architecting the content, and creating ancillary retention levers, is nothing short of a fortune 500 CEO mindset. Have a look -

  1. 1000+ meaningful, educative rhymes (like Letters, Numbers, Poems, Objects, Colors etc) - (instead of tobbaco like rhymes of Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes )

  2. Vernacular - Building content for toddlers in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bangla etc

  3. Launched apps (10M+ Downloads) (leveraging their agency muscle)

  4. Aiming for becoming go-to content of unregulated playschools and nurseries. Fun to learn - watch video rhymes, answer questions!

  5. Needless to say, the ad revenue estimates are between Rs. 60-80cr/yr

  6. They've launched 8+ channels in the universe to supplement the ad revenue and scale distribution

All of it done from a humble agency office in Chennai, simply out of love for the daughter.

Imagine the scale for a minute. That's Creator Economy!

Exly (YC W19)

Aug 29 · linkedin

UP Has to be the most advanced state!

Recently UP was in news for holding the salaries of govt employees if they don;t declare their assets. Smart move to correlate corrupt officers with their assets and then take action - why did no other state came to think of such reforms.

And now, UP becomes the first state to define a social media policy! While I haven't read through the fine print, I think that even if its designed to help govt communicate about their initiatives, its not just a good news but its the beginning of paradigm shift. Here's what I think:

  • Govt recognizing an emerging space will give push to creators
  • Creators will eventually shift from 9-5 jobs to making content full time
  • Content quality will improve because of higher competition
  • Some more regulations are expected to follow to solve for fraud, user generated ratings, curbing misleading advertising etc.
  • Increased mental adoption in parents' mind

The creator economy is surely at an inflection point. And more and more states are following!

PS: If you didn't read about it, govt of Telangana also announced something called a Youtube Academy last month! Hopefully, i'll write about it :)

Related Questions

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Sonesh Jain
Sonesh Jain, photo 1
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Gurugram, Haryana, India