http://contentsutra.com/article/419-no-laughing-matter-an-iim-a-alum-aspires-to-create-indias-onion/
No Laughing Matter: An IIM-A Alum Aspires To Create India’s Onion Angelina Jolie reads his website when Brad Pitt bores her. And Pitt, in turn, reads the site to keep his wife happy. Meet Paagal Patrakar (mad journalist, inadequately translated), hitherto known only by this pseudonym, who has built a humour blog he started to tide over a bad patch, into a growing digital brand. FakingNews.com is his imaginary take on news and events, broadly modelled on The Onion, and it’s quite a hit among readers, with some of his posts going viral. A sampling of recent headlines: “SRK was detained at US airport due to stammering.â€� “Boy shocked to know that his favourite newsreader was an asshole.â€� “MBA turned entrepreneur gives up, fires himself, seeks bailout.â€� “Clashes break out in India as Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize.â€� While his spiffy website and satirical writing have earned the year-old site a growing stream of visitors, what is less well-known is that the man behind the show is a 2007 graduate of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, the country’s top-rated business school. On campus, Rahul Roushan showed both a penchant for humour and an entrepreneurial streak. He used to host a talk show on the campus intranet and sent out regular compilations of “weird newsâ€� to the alumni mailing list. He also built a fantasy cricket game, together with two batchmates, at CricStock.com, which combined cricket and elements of stock trading. What may help with his efforts to grow FakingNews is the fact that CrickStock.com was recently acquired by the US-based DreamCricket.com. He wouldn’t disclose the financials of the deal. “I’m not faking that, I can say that much,â€� he says. It has not been all fun and games for Roushan, who also holds a journalism degree from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication and worked as a producer and later anchor at Hindi news channel Sahara Samay. Despite early popularity and glowing media coverage, CrickStock.com suffered from unfavourable odds when India and Pakistan crashed out of the 2007 Cricket World Cup in the early stages. “There was a complete loss of interest in Cricket then, till India won the 20/20 World Cup,â€� Roushan says. “But by then, we had sort of neglected the site. We shouldn’t have. That will remain a big lesson for us, always.â€� Roushan started doing business consulting in the social sector but soon hit a lean patch as the world was tottering towards its worst recession in decades. With advice from a professor to stick to what interested him, he decided to try his hand at an Indian version of The Onion, which he never read as a journalist, but was hooked to at business school. Roushan set up the domain and did his first post on the night of 14 September 2008. The next day, Lehman Brothers collapsed. “I found the whole situation funny. Here the world’s greatest investment bank was collapsing and I was depressed about just having a lean patch. In an odd sort of way, it cheered me up,â€� Roushan says. The site gradually became popular and in August this year, he moved to the current version of the site he built from scratch using open-source tools. Traffic has grown six times since the redesigned site went up. But at 5,000 total visitors (about 1,000 uniques) a day, he cannot yet monetize the site through ads. The other trouble is that many advertisers may not want to associate with the site’s satirical content. What works in his favour is that there is no big humour brand online in India. And with mainstream media likely to never stray from political correctness, Roushan could grow to capture that space. He also wants to add video content. He has been on the receiving end of hate mail and hopes that no one would be “unwise enoughâ€� to sue him for what he writes. “There’s a clear disclaimer in the name of the site itself. I’m also careful to give disclaimers wherever necessary.â€� While the site needs money to grow, Roushan says he knows it won’t be easy to raise funds. He is currently mulling other options such as digital marketing or content syndication. He wants to be able to get paid contributors for the site and produce quality video content. “Once I can demonstrate that the model can work, I think it won’t be difficult to raise funds,â€� he says. For the sake of some good laughs, we hope Roushan’s second venture is also a success. ------------------------------------ -- INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Get all ZESTMedia mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to [email protected], OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/ PARTICIPATE Share media news, discuss journalism issues and network with media professionals across South Asia on this mailing list. Just write to [email protected] TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTMedia by sending a blank mail to [email protected] OR, if you have a Yahoo! 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