As creator economy grows, this start-up helps creators monetise

It all started in 2021 when Vivek Yadav and Vishnu Pathak – both flatmates in Bengaluru during the Covid lockdown – were on the lookout for building something together. While Yadav is a former investment banker, who has worked with Silk Bridge Partners apart from a few edtechs, Pathak led the development team in Accel portfolio company Cogoport.  

Interestingly, Yadav was part of a few WhatsApp channels where creators were operating their communities and he was quick to notice the various pain points including those related to payments.  

This led to the duo launch Cosmofeed, an all-in-one platform for content creators, in September 2021.  

Simplifying the model, Gurugram-based Cosmofeed is a dynamic content monetisation and consumption platform that enables creators to digitally and seamlessly monetise and manage their audiences.  

This assumes significance as creating content has become a sector in itself with social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Meta (erstwhile Facebook), SnapChat and TikTok among others boasting of millions of individuals who are creating content and based on their huge following even monetising their content by way of partnerships and advertisements.  

Some reports have pegged that content creator industry size at well over $100 billion with the number of creators in India pegged at over 100 million.  

While one may feel that content monetisation is a cumbersome process as the creator will be forced to wear too many hats – content creation, dissemination, managing communities and finally keeping a track of payments.  

Interestingly, Cosmofeed has simplified the process and here is how it works.  

“The platform provides creators with multiple ways to start communities – both free and paid versions - and monetise their exclusive bits of content,” says Yadav.  

“It has monetisation features like Locked Messages that allow creators to sell exclusive content on the platform or other platforms as well, premium subscription channels that allow creators to run subscription groups on the platform or on Telegram; and Courses to sell and manage community of learners,” he adds.  

From a content creator perspective, he or she can start the monetising journey via Locked Messages – often portrayed as the USP feature – by sharing any exclusive content in text, PDFs or video format for a specific price at any platform of their choosing by sharing the link to the exclusive content.  

Further, an established creator with minimal distribution can start by forming a community or choose to make a premium community -- subscribed on a time-period basis -- to give access and exclusivity to their ‘True Fans’.  

Meanwhile, creators with pre-made offerings can choose to sell their ‘Courses’ through Cosmofeed even as creators also have the opportunity to access the ‘Affiliate Growth Layer’ to share a per cent of the earning with community members who help them get more signups for their courses etc.  

“Monetisation, creator support and affiliate selling are our main USPs with Cosmofeed being the first platform to allow creators to earn directly from their users by providing them multiple tools and features to monetise, grow and retain user,” says Yadav.  

“From providing operational support to deliver services to creative support to provide better experiences to end user, we work with the creators to give them best platform tech and operationally to start their journey,” he adds.  

Currently, the platform has more than 1,000 creators on its platform and, more importantly, it is not operating on a cash burn model as the start-up earns by charging a 10 per cent platform fee on all transactions that happen on the platform.  

Going ahead, it is aiming to onboard over 10,000 creators by end-2022 while focusing on expanding vernacularly in India. Its target group includes any creator who has a strong distribution in terms of followers, channels and network but is struggling to monetise or has not monetised till date.  

The start-up has secured funding of over $1.5 million till date and is growing at 20 per cent month-on-month. Incidentally, the start-up was bootstrapped till February 2022. 

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