Browsing on YouTube for some motivation on a lazy Sunday, I first came across Josh Talks and it was a pleasure to receive a dose of motivation in my mother tongue! Looking further into the channel, I discovered that the platform provides motivational videos in 9 vernacular languages of India. Intrigued by the concept, I delved into the backstory of Josh Talks. Josh Talks is an Indian media platform based in Gurgaon, Haryana.
Josh Talks was founded by Supriya Paul and Shobhit based on a situation youth often face: Having no idea about what one wants to do with their life! Both the founders felt that many of the youth in India are not opting for their passion as they do not have proper guidance. Supriya herself was the victim to this situation until she met Shobhit and together they changed the fate of many people. Born and brought up in Gurgaon, Paul excelled in academics and was an all-rounder. As soon as she joined college, Supriya opted for a Bachelors degree in Commerce without rhyme or reason and was soon getting ready to take the entrance tests.
“I had this lost feeling within me, where I did not understand why I was doing this. By chance I met Shobhit and we were started interacting and talking about how so many students in Delhi University or students of our age group do not really know what they want to do in their life and are doing things for the sake of doing things,” says Paul.
Supriya met Shobhit at a party one day where Shobhit was vocal about youth feeling demotivated and not knowing where they’re going with their lives. Supriya could readily relate with him and Banga started recounting how Steve Job’s motivational speech was pivotal for him to feel motivated. The duo settled on the idea of starting a platform where motivational videos can be hosted in vernacular languages. The next big challenge for them was to find people in India who were advocates of excellence, who were doing great work of changing things, and getting them all on a platform to tell their story and inspire others.
The journey of Josh Talks began with conferences in 2014 in both Delhi and Bengaluru. Social activists, business leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, academics, administrators sportspeople, authors, musicians, actors and other artists were chosen as the speakers and it was made sure that people from all walks of life were involved.
The marquee Josh Talks LEAP 2016 took place in October and featured 24 speakers and 5,000 attendees. By August 2017, the company has been on the road and organized monthly conferences in all the tier 2 cities throughout India.
Banga and Paul strongly believe that Josh Talks is not only a platform for sharing success stories of entrepreneurs, but it aims at involving people from all walks of life at one place.
“When I needed a push in life, there was nobody with me to help me in that direction. The reason why I initially joined and decided to do this with Shobhit was because I wanted to save that time for others in my age group because it is not a nice feeling to not know where you are headed in life,” says Paul.
Although hit with a loss of 1 million and 5 million respectively in 2015 and 2016, both the co-founders kept moving forward with faith and now is expecting profits around 20 million! Some of the major partners of Josh Talks are UN Women, UNDP, ILO, DICCI, Indian Army, ITC and Vivel. One of Josh Talks’ major partners is Facebook with whom they conduct conferences, workshops & bootcamps to encourage entrepreneurship in India.
Till now the platform has managed to cover over 1,000+ speakers with 1.2 Million subscribers on YouTube and 999,000+ fans on Facebook and receives 20 Million views monthly. Their amazing content can be found on YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, Saavn and several other online platforms. Josh Talks managed to raise $1.5 million in pre-Series, a funding round led by New York-based Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF).
Also, Josh Talks is the recipient of National Media Award by Honourable President of India, Ramnath Kovind and was also featured in Forbes magazine ‘Asia 30 Under 30’ list for 2018. So the next time you feel demotivated, click on the videos of Josh Talks and let us know your afterthoughts in the comments below!
