[Exclusive Interview] This New Age Social Media Platform Gives The Power Back To Users; Deploys AI For Content Sanitization

Recently, we interacted with Mr. Piyush Kulshreshtha, Founder & CEO, Khul Ke – a new age social media platform that leverages the power of user generated content to trigger dialogues.

1. Why did you feel the need to launch Khul Ke, who is the Brain behind the brand? What sets it apart from rival companies?

Our excitement is sparked by the fact that an infinite number of social networks and digital societies exist worldwide. The idea is to tap into the potential of vast social networks. Conversations bring possibilities and lead to purposeful collaboration. We are an India-centric business, with the interest of the common people at the core. We want to impact the day-to-day life of the users by enabling them to choose the right technology. Our focus is to build a variety of ecosystems across the areas of education, health, law, sports and more. 

2. How Khul Ke is ensuring the profitability of its business while remaining self-funded?

At Khul Ke, we believe that everything in life starts with a conversation. Our goal is to provide tools to help people make their point effectively through our features. We are trying to build avenues for monetization through collaboration and advertising. The focus is to build India’s first all-India education ecosystem.

3. What does the talent management strategy at Khul Ke look like?

We are looking for a lot of new talent to join us. We have opportunities across Tech, Journalism, Business Development, Outreach and CXO teams. We are also looking for a CHRO and a HR consultancy to help us build a robust talent management strategy. The company has already rewarded a few team members with ESOPs and even though there was no such commitment, it was based purely on consistently extraordinary performance. Our idea is to build a long-term team.

4. Short-form video content has witnessed a surge in popularity, and it’s important to understand how Snip-It integrates into Khul Ke’s overall strategy and What advantages does it provide to both users and content creators?

On Khul Ke, we are redefining the way short videos are consumed. We want use case of Snip-It to be purposeful and clean fun which is not the case on existing platforms. The Snip-It feature will be available across 12 categories through which people can express their opinions. The categories will be Current affairs, News, Masti, Showcase, DIY, Bhakti, Politics, Sports, RoundTable Snippets, Leadership Speaks, Science and Technology and Others. 

5. What are your thoughts on the swift advancements in the technical features of other social media platforms?

Social media platforms have been around for 20 years and there’s little to no swiftness in advancement. The existing platforms are still dealing with the ‘Status Box’. Some platforms have video and audio features etc, but they are not evolving. There should be collaborations. AI and ML is used for listing content. There’s a need to reverse the algorithm towards taking the user to a better direction. 

6. How and what kind of content are you planning to monetize on Khul Ke?

Khul Ke is a destination for meaningful content across the categories of education, sports, health, law, current affairs, science and technology, leadership, and government. These are our focus areas and monetization will be done accordingly.

7. What is the idea behind launching the Padma Awardees Series?

The idea behind the Padma Awardees Series was to shine the spotlight on the achievements of ordinary people who have made a distinct and meaningful contribution to society. We are focussing on inspiring stories of people who have the right attitude, no jealousy, and no insecurity. The stories which focus on love, kindness, high empathy value and altruism. None of the awardees put themselves before their work which is the common thread among them. It is their work that comes first. We believe if anybody should influence the society today, it is them and achievers like them in many other fields. We need icons who can share their experiential wisdom. In today’s time, this is what our influencers should be like.

8. How are you integrating AI and ML on your platform?

We will use AI in the future in a limited way. The use case for AI for Khul Ke is content listing and the other is content sanitation. We are not planning to leverage ML as of now, but we assure that the users will have better experience in time.

9. What are the upcoming roundtables scheduled for next month?

In the upcoming months, we will continue with the Padma Awardees Series and RoundTables across the categories of science, politics, law and judiciary, etc. We will be working on building few more Flagship properties like Padma Awardees. As our focus is on building India’s first all-India education ecosystem consisting of faculties, students, and education boards, the RoundTables will revolve around the same. 

10. What are your upcoming marketing campaigns?

The upcoming marketing campaigns will focus on Education as the goal is to build India’s first all-India education ecosystem.

11. What is your expansion plan for the next 18 months?

Our aim for the upcoming year is to ensure approximately one crore users download our app. We are planning to build teams in 12 Indian states. In the next one-year, we aim to provide users with 60-80 hours of long-format video content and 125 hours of short-format video content daily. 50 percent of the content will be user-generated.

In addition to this, our major focus is to essentially build vast ecosystems across education, health, law, sports and more.

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