Saturday, December 13, 2025 | 03:59 PM ISTहिंदी में पढें
Business Standard
Notification Icon
userprofile IconSearch

The push for online pay revenues

About a dozen firms are discovering users are willing to pay not just for entertainment, but also for news online

The push for online pay revenues
premium

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar
In May 2016, Shivendra Gaur started Rocket Post Live. It offers local news from Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh through WhatsApp. Of the 14,000 people who use the service, more than 11,000 pay Rs 100 each a year. 

Down south in Bengaluru, The Ken, launched last year, offers one original business story of 2,000-5,000 words every morning. It charges Rs 2,750 a year (excluding GST) and has 20,000 subscribers for its newsletter. Of these, paying subscribers are in “the low single digit thousands,” said co-founder Rohin Dharmakumar at Digipub, a digital publishing event last month. 

Fastfilmz, another Bengaluru-based video app launched