#4 The Bridge (Arshi Yasin) - Bringing local sports to the world
Arshi Yasin, Co-founder of The Bridge [https://thebridge.in/], speaks about her journey from engineering to now building a content platform to cover local sports in India. The Bridge now has over a million impressions on social media and covers stories from athletics, badminton, boxing to marathons, wrestling and weightlifting, amongst others.
Episode Notes
- Arshi Yasin studied engineering, but did not want to take up a tech job. Started her career as a social media developer, her latest previous job was working for Logical Indian and that’s where she also met her co-founder
- At Logical Indian she worked on a massive crowdfunding campaign for the India women’s ice hockey and saw first hand the impact of the campaign, something which was completely unexpected and thought there could be so many other stories that need coverage
- Hence started the bridge in Oct 2017 to focus on local sports coverage, as platform that “Bridges” the gap in indian sports coverage, a company that is by India for India. Reason that media is a very important channel to increase popularity in a sports that creates a viral loop that feeds itself (more views, more engagement, more views)
- There was a bit of resistance when initially starting out. Will content work? Will people read about athletics and lesser sports? But the numbers (as per YourStory - over a million users, with monthly impressions of 25 million across all social media platforms).
- AY feels sports is so close to a way of life and forces you to be your own inspiration. She personally plays badminton, cycles and runs. She also cites The Athletic as an inspiration which has a huge base and validation of the subscription model for content
- Research forms a core part of what they are doing. This is because data is hard to find for lesser known sports. Hence the need to obtain data. This also helps them to be creative in the story. The Bridge also focuses on audience engagement to make the story popular (audience poll, quiz).
- Trends are increasing for lesser known sports. Focus on sports personalities who want to include stories in their brand marketing so partnerships are possible. Plans to add more verticals to the content business
- Another challenge is distribution. How to take this content to more people? For advertisers to be attracted they usually ask for 5-10 million views which is difficult
- Rapid Fire Questions
Fav sports person - Sania Mirza
Her Favourite story - The story of Deborah Herold, who survived a tsunami and is now one of India’s top cyclist
Fav books - Johathan Livingston Seagull by richard bach, No limits by Mukesh Bansal
This podcast is part of Onsyde [https://onsyde.in/], a SaaS app looking to change the recreational sport experience. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast - we are on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/2dSMkae80aaXr8UKuGvPZz], Google Podcast [https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xMjQyODIzOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw%3D%3D], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-onsyde-podcast/id1493930756], Castbox [https://castbox.fm/channel/id2541512?country=gb], Stitcher [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-onsyde-podcast] and Overcast [https://overcast.fm/itunes1493930756/the-onsyde-podcast].
