What is Matrubharti?
We are an ebook publishing platform for writers writing literature in indian regional languages, it is a self publishing platform.
For readers we are an Indian eBook App to read interesting fiction and non fiction literature on their mobile.
The beauty of our platform is size of content, we are publishing short content as small as 1000 words which has byte size of 100kb or less. The novels are published as episodes, the books are published as chapters. So it makes easy to read on small devices.
The loyal reader story
This is much beyond the page view economy of websites, we are talking about readers consciously searching for content, viewing it, downloading it on their mobile and reading with consent. It was very important here to mention loyal Indian readers because we know who they are and how have they been using Matrubharti eBooks app in day to day life.
When it comes to loyalty, this reader is not just coming once in a while just because we advertised somewhere, he has stayed with us for over 15 months, reading almost daily and inviting others to come and read on Matrubharti app.
The engagement of readers
The beauty of Matrubharti ebooks app is interactivity, an ebook app that makes readers and writers feel connected with each other. Readers leave feedback ( over 30% readers on platform are leaving star feedback), writers respond to feedback.
The real feedback comes from the readers who has been following the writer for quite a long time, they critic, they praise and they share about writers on their social network, that is the bonding we have created on Matrubharti.
Organizing Competitions of Writing and We all win
Publishing regional language writers on an authentic platform and giving them right perspective of being a published writer was my goal since the day I started Matrubharti.
We have innovative way of marketing, Our core driver of content generation is competitions, this is where the writer comes in contact with Matrubharti, since 15 months we have organized 15 such competition that encourage regional writing. Call it story writing or essay writing, poem writing or Love stories, we have organized all this based on our study of reader searches of content.
No Free writing, All paid work
It is not just the inner satisfaction of writers, but we have made them earn from the content on our platform. We have impacted writer community by our innovative model of payment to writers. Here writers are not waiting for year to get the royalty, we pay them instant based on size of content and popularity of subject. Writers are now columnist on our platform publishing consistently to get paid regularly.
Last year in 2015-16, over 200,000 INR has been paid to our writers, that averages over 200 writers have got paid over 10,000 rupees per year from us, that was a dream for many. We have made it possible only because of support from writers and readers both.
Matrubharti now is inching towards setting up a bench mark in ebook publishing industry, here we wish no writer writes for free for any media, all should be paid and well paid based on their potential.
Quality of Content is top priority
Quality check is still a manual operation for us for content acceptance, because we believe machines can only detect the words, while humans can detect the feelings behind the words, our editorial team reviews each and every content submitted to our platform, once approved, only then it goes live to the readers list of ready to download content.
We disapprove content and not the writer, the writer has unlimited chances to submit the content for further review. In most of the cases the content is accepted after 2-3 iterations.
The growth moving forward
The growth has been phenomenal so far, when this post was submitted, we had over 60000 app downloads with registered users crossing 50,000. Total writer count was 1700 while ebooks publishd in 6 languages were 4200+, the most exciting part is we have received 700000 downloads of ebooks by this small group of readers. That justifies our title of Loyal readers.
It was not easy, it was not instant, Matrubharti has been in this business for over 15 months now, by leaps and bounds, we have grown by substance and strengthening our roots even deeper day by day.
We are opening up opportunities for 10 Indian languages in 3 years and 21 Indian languages in 5 years’ time. We have plans to engage over 10000 writers in 3 years, they all should be paid for their work, while readers will read it by subscribing to our eBook library or continue seeing ads supported model.
How are we different compared to other similar players?
We are among one or among few to pay writers a fee for writing, so here writers do not have to wait till their content is sold. They get paid on total words and just 100 downloads before amount is credited to their account.
For readers it is hassle free because they don’t have to buy every single piece of content, they just have to subscribe for our monthly/yearly plan to access unlimited content. Though it is lifetime free product for free users but they will have to see ads in between and access the content online only. While paid users have no ads and offline content access on top of priority access to premium content.
Our mantra for success
Startups should create employment and that too a larger size of society should benefit, so in Matrubharti’s case we believe regional language writers will benefit hugely by financial earning and social respect. Jai hind.
Twitter Handle : @matrubharti @mahendras
asha chaudhry
many congrats mahendra! your GA is very impressive and all in the short while of 15 months to achieve all this! kudos.
mahendra, just one editorial suggestion – could you pls edit your post and add what exactly what matrubharati is – both for authors and ebook readers? i had to click your link to figure out what you exactly are. ideally that should happen on the post itself!
btw – how different a platform are you from pratilipi? ranjeet is an active rodinhooder as well!
good luck and great going!