IWMBuzz: A Growth Story

Internet publishing bootstrapped start-up IWMBuzz Media recently completed four successful years in operations. Apart from publishing, IWMBuzz Media also organises impactful large-scale ground events (India Web Fest, Digital Awards, Style Awards, India Kids Summit, TV Summit), among other business activities like influencer marketing and branded content. Its primary business divisions include IWMBuzz Engage, IWMBuzz Live, IWMBuzz Social, IWMBuzz Studios, among others.

The founding members of IWMBuzz are Siddhartha Laik, Ashish Banka, Franklin Tuscano and Srividya Rajesh.

The company hit a new high when it recently got ranked in top 3 entertainment news focussed publishing houses in India as per Comscore. A few other high points have been the rebranding exercise, adding casual gaming experience on the portal, beefing up of revenue team and news expansion to cover all regional content markets.

"It's a perfect blend of experience and exuberance. We have grown from a four-member team to over 50 plus tribe now. We are competing against some of the most established well-funded organisations in India, yet we are in the race for market dominance as an independent network. Over the years, we have put in sustained hardwork backed by data-driven strategy to gain a strong reliable organic audience base. IWMBuzz will continue to experiment, expand and innovate in time to come," says Siddhartha Laik, Co Founder, Editor in Chief, IWMBuzz Media.

It has not been easy for businesses to steer through COVID challenges. Adds Ashish Banka, Co founder and Head of Business at IWMBuzz, "COVID has been challenging for us, like everyone else. However, we regrouped and worked on our strengths rather than overthinking on areas of concern. We kept our team engaged, motivated and planned precisely on immediate growth areas. We managed better EBITDA numbers than last year and we will continue to protect what we have, as long as COVID prevails, and in near future expand when the time is right. Brands have shown faith towards doing continued business with us and hopefully, in time to come we will capture more market share in overall revenue pie."

Apart from regular rules of engagement, IWMBuzz is also looking to bring tech innovations to ensure augment user experience.

"We are learning, evolving and experimenting keeping in mind that our core is Indian audiences. As we grow, we focus more on data security, better UI experience while tapping on newer trends of in-built commerce, gamification and AI-based engagement. In the near future, as we further strengthen our platforms and third party social media reach, we are confident of launching products which will adhere to our core philosophy of entertainment yet open up whole new possibilities of organic revenue growth," says Franklin Tuscano, CTO and Co Founder, IWMBuzz Media.

IWMBuzz media reaches out to over 20 million-plus organic audiences monthly with a strong reach in metros as well as Hindi heartlands. Editorially, apart from Bollywood and TV, it precisely focuses on the latest trends and content creators in the web entertainment space (OTT, short for video platforms et al).

"Internet empowers new talent, it gives voice to many who are not privileged with a strong professional structural setup. We tap into such areas and bring a newer audience to our platform. We break stories, do detailed feature stories, in-depth interviews, engaging videos to ensure that we stay ahead in the competition. IWMBuzz English and Hindi have seen acceptance among fraternity and readers and as a committed team, we aim to push the envelope more and more in the coming time. We have just started and we have a long way to go," ends Srividya Rajesh, Co founder and Associate Editor at IWMBuzz Media.