Contify is India’s leading business news, content and information provider with interests in managing databases; publishing news stories; and syndicating content from reputed publishers to global databases. We recently caught up with Contify’s CEO Mohit Bhakuni to understand more about the product and his journey so far. Here are some excerpts from the interview.
How did it all start?
Founded in April 2009 by two Indian Institute of Technology alumni in a small basement-turned-office and 1 lakh INR, Contify has grown into an 85-people strong multi-city operation in a short span of three years.
What is Contify’s proposition?
Contify positions itself as the easiest source to receive industry specific news underpinned by sound concept based search. It licenses content from publishers and uses advanced technologies to provide functionalities like faceted search and filtering to provide relevant content to the readers.
How are you funded?
Contify’s parent company is Athena Information Solutions Pvt Ltd. Athena is the largest licensed content syndication company in India. In addition, Athena generates revenues from services business by providing content related services to few international clients. Contify product development is funded by the profits generated from Athena’s business operations.
What is the vision for you company?
To become one of the most respected products for industry information in India.
What are your key offerings?
Contify is a comprehensive news and information database aggregated from over 100 publications, which gives users access to insightful business content with its smart ‘filter-based’ search platform. Contify also has a strong in-house editorial team, which covers information and reports news on a range of industry verticals including banking, finance, energy, retail, automobiles and pharmaceutical, as well as key government policies related to India’s business environment.
How is Contify different from exiting platforms?
According to Mohit, Contify provides a unique value proposition to its clients who are looking for industry news in a cost effective way. It also focuses on small to medium sized businesses that have limited bandwidth or financial resources to source such aggregated industry information.
What is your biggest challenge?
The team is consistently working on coming up with ways to enhance user experience. One such example includes de-duplicating of stories across publications to provide only unique articles that are relevant to the users.
What does the future hold?
Mohit suggested that Contify is also building customised features for its clients to enhance their experience. For instance, it recently introduced widgets directly on the website to allow users to receive customised news.
Our view is that with intense competition in the news aggregator space Contify is likely to face stiff challenges from the incumbents and in order to build a sustainable advantage it will have to continuously innovate through additional product features such as analytics that can demonstrate value for money to the clients.
Post Contributed by Abhimanyu Godara
