Infotainment channels are the next big thing. Here’s why

Due to its positioning between ‘influencers’ and edtech startups, infotainment is now serving as a gateway or funnel to various educational topics on the one hand and becoming a customer acquisition strategy for larger businesses on the other. (Representational image: Karolina Grabowska via Pexels)

B-schools in India have 4.03 lakh students. The top 5 infotainment channels in India — Abhi and Niyu, AevyTV, Dhruv Rathee, Soch by Mohak Mangal and Think School — have 18.5 million (1.85 crore) subscribers. That is more than 40 times the number of B-school students, highlighting the gap and need for accessible and simplified business education.

Infotainment, a combination of entertainment and education, is gaining ground, and while it is not an entirely new concept, what makes it exciting now is:

1.    Personalised content

2.    Increased use of technology such as AR and VR to enhance the viewer experience

3.    High level of engagement between creators and their audience — for example, taking up an academic course offered by the creator Physics Walla

“The lines between education and entertainment are blurring and the audience is drawn to infotainment because it offers a unique blend of information and entertainment that is not only engaging but also enjoyable to watch,” says Varun Mayya, cofounder of AevyTV.

What makes infotainment more interesting is that it is creating a category for serious creators — defined as those who believe in well-researched content delivered to the audience in an engaging manner. These creators, in many cases, have built their channels and audience not for ‘personal branding’ but to build a business.

‘Use cases’ of infotainment

·  Who controls Antarctica| Mystery of the 7th continent - 7.5M views

·  Pan masala industry needs to stop| Spitting problem of India - 4.9M views

·  Hindenburg has killed Adani Group?: Decoding Adani’s response to Hindenburg (business case study) - 1.8M views

·  Who are Indians| Aryan Invasion Theory Explained - 1.2M views

·  Bard: Google ka NAYA A.I. Ek Sam Hai? - 3.1K views

It takes an average creator at least 48-56 hours to come up with this kind of well-researched content that is not only viewed by a large audience, but also relayed in business schools as a contemporary business case study. Thereby, slowly evolving into ‘content for thinkers/ or an academically inclined audience’.

Take Think School for example; Ganeshprasad, cofounder of Think School, says, ‘ThinkSchool wants to make a dent in the Indian education system by imparting world-class education that is not given in schools and colleges. In India, an average 19-year-old is not taught business concepts unless they enroll into a business school, and by the time they are 25, their appetite for risk is lost.”

Due to its positioning between ‘influencers’ and edtech startups, infotainment is now serving as a gateway or funnel to various educational topics on the one hand and becoming a customer acquisition strategy for larger businesses on the other.

PhysicsWallah is a great example of this. Alakh Pandey used his YouTube channel as the main funnel to build out PhysicsWallah, the platform. Traditional edtech startups have a more structured approach to education and may offer a more in-depth and comprehensive learning experience, but YouTube infotainment content will be the primary top-of-the-funnel medium for all edtechs in the future.

Martin Noronha, a filmmaker by profession, has worked with several startups. He was always interested in learning new business concepts and increasingly found it hard to access this information through his network, which was not so well informed. However, he soon got hooked onto infotainment channels where this information was not only available for free, but was also easy to understand. “I got on the bandwagon due to FOMO (fear of missing out), I wanted to know what was happening in the world,” says Noronha.

Apart from Indian infotainment channels, Noronha is also a fan of Johnny Harris, a US-based filmmaker and journalist-turned-YouTuber. Infotainment is making a change by making complex content easy to consume and “people will soon realise that an MBA can be done online,” says Noronha.

Who are these ‘Infotainers’?

Apart from being solid content creators, infotainers I spoke to are creators with a founder mindset. They are also people who are extremely passionate about changing the educational landscape in India by making B-school level education available through a ubiquitous platform like YouTube.

Aevy initially started with ‘couple vlogs’ shot by entrepreneur Varun Mayya and his wife, Achina Mayya, but as they kept experimenting with different formats, they found success with a unique recipe. AevyTV combines ELI5 (explain like I am 5) content with elements of Vox and Saturday Night Live, and continuously improves its videos using deep research and data. As Aevy grew, the team realised the importance of building a loyal audience. This led them to give away free NFTs, teach video editing, and even help their audience land jobs through their video editing cohort.

Think School was started by Ganeshprasad and Parsh Kothari. Kothari, the CEO, is a graduate of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education; Ganeshprasad, the COO, is a civil engineer from Pune. They have a burning desire to make world-class education accessible to every student in India. Think School covers deeply researched business case studies and geopolitics with an audience ranging from students in the ninth grade to boomer housewives (baby boomers are those born between 1945 and 1965) who want to start off on their own. Predominantly their audience is from B schools and their own roadmap includes providing an ‘at-home MBA’.

Soch, by Mohak Mangal is among the top 1 percent YouTube channels with more than 1.5 million subscribers. The channel aims to provide research-driven and visually appealing content and they are also expanding across different platforms (i.e., Instagram, Facebook and Twitter).

Says Mangal, “I see Soch as a valuable asset for my future startup — currently at Stanford, I am working on a couple of ideas. I don't see Soch as the only full-time thing I do after graduation. Instead, I want to start up and use Soch to support the startup in different ways. For example, Soch could help me get into meetings, hire employees, raise my company profile, etc.”

The future of infotainment

Infotainment is a highly sought after genre for sponsors due to its high retention rate and ability to reach serious viewers looking to learn. As there are fewer infotainment creators compared to entertainment, the supply is lower than demand, allowing the creators to charge higher rates. On the other hand, in entertainment, where there are thousands of creators, brands have more options to choose from and can dictate their terms. Companies such as smallcase, Kuku FM and Coding Invaders have been early adopters of the concept.

“Currently, the most prominent creators are Hindi-speaking males of a similar age group with similar video styles. I see newer creators disrupting it because:

i) There is demand for better quality infotainment and this will only increase as more young people come online. The younger population would want creators to be as diverse as they are.

ii) Costs to create will go down; there are AI tools that improve bad-quality audio to podcast quality at the click of a button — with such tools, creating quality videos will be democratised.

iii) AI tools will reduce the barriers to language, so regional creators may become mainstream.

iv) Overall content quality will increase significantly. Creators who tell the most engaging stories and thrive are not necessarily the ones who have the best editing or the most controversial view,” says Mangal.

Ganeshprasad, the COO of Think School, adds, “Creators command such a high level of trust from the audience that soon brands will want to leverage this trust to legitimise their name in the market. Creators are more answerable to the audience, and the audience knows that creators take every endorsement seriously. One can already see this playing out as Finance with Sharan was on billboards promoting Ditto insurance. Imagine the RoI a brand gets by working with multiple creators vs. one big star — this is only the beginning.”

Don’t be surprised if B-schools of the future are run by diverse creators.