Shalini Tewari, founder of Viral Shots talks to us about the idea behind her venture and what it takes to deliver enticing digital content as per a user’s needs! Viral Shots specializes in providing the reader the latest trending and viral content in a short, easy-to-read format.
Can you tell us a little about your past work experiences, childhood, etc?
I was born in a family of Doctors. I grew up to see my only sibling follow the family legacy. However I always loved taking my independent decisions. It did create some turf in the family to see me “experiment” so much with my life instead of settling for the obvious. I specialized in Mass Communications and did my PG in Marketing from SIMS. I absolutely loved Consumer Behaviour and Human Psychology. The deep psyche behind every human action/behaviour became my forte and obsession and I knew I had the capability to realize this learning in a corporate structure.
Since the inception of my career, I managed Strategic Human Resource and Marketing simultaneously. I experienced tremendous satisfaction in joining small size start-ups and helping the organization attain massive scale in size and revenue. In my group of professionals I came to be known as “TDR” – Tear down and re-engineer specialist.
How did the idea of Viral Shots come about? How long has it been and what has your entrepreneurial journey been like?
The complexity in the career grows when you step out of the comfort zone. With over 14 years of experience in senior positions, I wanted to step in a leadership role. I had the chance to head a content initiative end to end for a year and I absolutely loved the challenges. About a year ago I studied the digital space and decided to capture the mobile space in non-formal content and came up with the idea of Viral Shots.
Viral Shots is a mobile app currently on android that brings engaging and trending content, heavily curated from various destinations in a crisp, micro-format. People just end up consuming common content across all platforms. Our team dives deep in the content ocean and picks up the most interesting, fun and trending content that the user can easily read and share on the go. We currently do content in English, Hindi, Bengali and Telegu and shall expand to all major Indian languages The stories across languages are not common but hand-picked to suit the taste of the user differently. Boredom buster on the go!
What were the top 3 challenge areas when starting up?
1. Balancing between your core idea and user/market feedback
2. Right people in your team who are willing to go the distance with you
3. Fast decisions & implementations irrespective of all the challenges life will throw at you in a Start up
How did you manage the funding initially for the venture?
Incidentally I discussed the Viral Shots idea with Mr. Kumar Apurva – a start-up specialist and my mentor to make it the largest Content app destination. He was instantly on board. We personally arranged for the funds for the initial 06 months to set up and run a good start up infra.
In the Digital / E-commerce space, what are your thoughts and comments on women contributing professionally to the field?
The eco-system today is much more supportive of women either as professionals or entrepreneurs’. There are lots of avenues that have opened up in the digital era that bridges the gap between the emotional and the aspirational life decisions.
What thoughts would you leave our readers with.
There is no regret as deep as the chances you did not take when you felt strongly about them. No one has all the right skills to do everything perfectly. But the important point is to start and learn fast along the way.