The Jurni takes millennials on a digital expedition

Priyam Sharma - Founder and CEO, The Jurni

The Jurni, culture, and travel daily digital newsletter with over half a million subscribers, quenches the curiosity of global Indian millennials by curating engaging content. Priyam Sharma, CEO, and Founder, shares her tale of growth in detail.

Questions

1. Tell us about the Jurni and its USPs? Who are the brand's competitors and what sets you apart?

We live in a time of content overload where time-poor professionals have been hit by social media fatigue. So many are curious about the world, but bored by the same type of news or content showing up on their feeds, time and again. The Jurni is a response to this predicament. As a weekday newsletter on travel, culture, and worklife, The Jurni cuts through the digital noise and brings its readers the most fascinating and, more importantly, relevant content, thoughtfully curated from hundreds of websites around the world.

While there are several emerging platforms for news in the country, I observed that there were no platforms interpreting the contemporary zeitgeist specifically for the Indian millennial, in the world's largest millennial market and thus I saw a gap in the market for The Jurni. There are some notable players, such as The Ken and Splainer, but they are mostly based on a paid subscription model.

Where we differ is not only our subject area (culture, travel, and worklife) but fundamentally, our belief of inspiring a zest for new ideas around the world - which is why we have kept our product free for all to read. The Jurni is the global Indian millennial's window to the world. We give our readers a front row seat to the world and equally, the world gets a glimpse into the lives of the world's largest demographic, the Indian millennial.

2. What makes it a millennial-friendly newsletter?

As we all know, the working population of today doesn't have much time between work and keeping up with what's going on around the world. Globally there has been a change in the appetite towards more short-form content, and The Jurni helps fill this gap by delivering contextualised stories.

Taking a cue from the burgeoning newsletter market in the US, which caters to a similar population, it is clear that India is ready for its next big creative revolution in the media space as well.

What makes us a friend of the millennial population is our unique yet relatable voice of a globally minded ‘thirtysomething'-year-old Indian, who shuffles between ‘Zoomlandia' and the office, and faces the same daily dilemmas we all do. This has struck a chord with people.

The fact that India's millennial population is one of the largest in the world, of course, only helps grow our community bigger.

3. Please share the growth numbers and the brand's expansion plans?

As of now, we have surpassed half a million subscribers to The Jurni, our first product.

Currently we are working on an exciting and unique concept with some of the most iconic cafés across the country, an initiative led by my Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Mohika Sharma. She has been scoping out café chains all across India to partner with our product.

The vision has always been to bring The Jurni at the heart of all conversations. And what better place to do this than where conversations occur.

4. Any articles (2-3) that got the brand a lot of appreciation and you are proud of including it in the Jurni?

All our stories have one goal at their core - to make the foreign feel familiar, and the familiar reveal new aspects we wouldn't have seen before. For instance, one of our stories on the lowrider community of LA gained traction amongst our readers as it showed the unfamiliar side of a pop culture phenomenon that is widely recognised but barely understood.

We drew a similar lens inward, when exploring the ‘adda culture of Kolkata, and another time, looked to the Middle East, Riyadh specifically, to highlight and understand why it was gaining popularity amongst the working population around the world.

We are very proud to be able to show a new facet of the world to our readers with each story, and inspire them to think differently, every single day.

5. Future plans of the brand?

We keep our ears to the ground and listen to our readers, it's really as simple as that.

While we have grown rapidly in India, we are nowhere near saturation. At the same time, we have received interest from abroad as well, specifically Southeast Asia and the Middle East, among a few others. Frequently our readers tell us how these markets need The Jurni.

In the short term, we are very much committed to India and seeing what happens over the next few months, while keeping an eye out for other viable markets. India lies at the intersection of a burgeoning economy of travellers who are digital natives, and undeniably, the size of this audience works in our favour.

In the long term, as and when we see how we can expand intelligently into these markets, we would consider it.

And, as far as the market reaction goes - in less than a year, The Jurni has grown to be India's largest newsletter on travel and culture, and our pace has only picked up.