HYDERABAD: As part of its two-day celebrations for completing 100 years, Hyderabad Public School organised the StartX Summit to discuss trends in business and innovation and invite young entrepreneurs to meet investors. On the second day of the summit, it featured a lineup of renowned HPS alumni, sharing their expert insights and strategies for achieving success in the startup landscape.
The event unfolded with a panel discussion on ‘Navigating the Creator Economy – A New Era of Digital Entrepreneurship’.
The participants included Ishan Chatterjee, Managing Director, YouTube India; Rahul Tamada, co-founder & CEO, Tamada Media; Supriya Yarlagadda, CEO, Annapurna Studios; Rana Daggubati, actor and producer; Nag Ashwin, film director and screenwriter and Sathish Mummareddy, former Product Manager, GenAI, Meta. They discussed the current trends in the digital economic landscape for entrepreneurs.
Talking about the democratisation of the creative economy, Supriya Yarlagadda, who was moderating the discussion, invited the panellists’ opinions on the changes they have observed in creators’ economic behaviour over the years. Ishan Chatterjee said that the digital era has brought a monumental change in democratising creative arts. He shared the example of a teenager from Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh who now has a 30-membered team helping him develop his content.
“Hyper-localisation and the ability to access languages and genres is evermore possible in the digital era. With a huge majority of content being consumed in short-form videos now, the content landscape will change in the next 24 months by GenAI. It will be an exponential and exciting change,” he said.
Adding to this, Rana Daggubati highlighted how the digital economy provides multiple options to creators to help them tell their stories. Sathish Mummareddy added that GenAI has shown that quality content can be made much faster and cheaper. Also, people who never had the opportunity to work in films and the domain of storytelling are now able to do so.
Rahul Tamada pointed out that monetisation of the content is also easier as more relatable content in a short-form storytelling format goes out to the audiences. “When every creator can build an audience set that is very niche, monetisation is an easy ball game. Short-form content is the future. Monetisation is just a byproduct of the community built on loyalty and constant engagement,” he said.
Responding to Supriya’s question on how to make content ‘wide and deep’, Rana Daggubati said, “Originality is to look within, which aims at achieving depth and looking out helps you widen your reach. Storytelling inherently has the power to enable you to do what you want to do. ‘Learning and unlearning’ is the key; you need to create a cycle. Change is going to be dramatic and quick and unless you are on that cycle, it will be difficult to get onto it. It is what you choose to chase – which skill you want to pick. Earlier it used to be an imitation game. The change of thought now is that the world is one and anything that is made here can get picked elsewhere in no time.”
Lastly, the panellists talked about studying creator analytics. Ishan Chatterjee said that finding and targeting the right audience is key. “There are about 600 million internet users in India. In the US, there are four lakh Telugu speakers. The idea is to go deep and find the rawness to make your content. Find your target audience: female, age 18-35, etc. Then find out how to tell this story. Short form content didn’t exist four years ago. GenAI has exponential potential to grow,” he said.
A major solution about enhancing start-ups was shared by Sathish Mummareddy: “In my story, I realised the gaps in my leadership skills. I developed them. I realised I had to become creative. I started sharing my personal stories on LinkedIn and taught courses to spread these skills. Find the pain that resonates and spread the story.”