Notion Press, a self-publishing platform has unveiled a reading app called Bynge Hindi, to bring fiction serials to smartphone- savvy readers. Free of cost, Bynge Hindi carries stories from top writers like Geet Chaturvedi, Kunwar Narain, Hrishikesh Sulabh, along with classical writers like Premchand, Jayshankar Prasad, Bhuvaneshwar, among others. Naveen Valsakumar, CEO, Notion Press tells us more.
What led you to start this app?
Over the last nine years of running Notion Press, we realised that most people who loved reading stories got bogged down by the sheer size of books. Besides, lack of access to high quality stories, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 towns was another factor that led to poor reading habits. We decided to fix this by launching Bynge, a serial fiction app for the smartphone generation where exciting stories from top writers are delivered as bite-sized episodes every week. A typical episode is about 1,000-word long or a five-minute read. New episodes are constantly released so that readers can keep coming back.
What are the top features of the app?
Readers get coins for performing certain actions that can be redeemed to access Premium episodes. They can have conversations with the writer and other readers for every episode. This helps provide feedback/insight to the writers on how to move the story forward in coming episodes. Writers also get indepth data on reading behaviour for their serial across every episode.
According to you, how has the pandemic modified reading habits?
The pandemic has fast-tracked digital adoption to create a massive spike in content consumption, mainly across social, gaming and media verticals. Bynge is at the confluence of all three verticals. We are a social reading app with a gamelike experience and reach people via their smartphones. This has helped us capitalise on the spike during the pandemic.
Any special features for the visually-impaired?
The app is only 100-days old, and we are still building out the accessibility features for the visually impaired. We will soon launch a bunch of features including audio-versions for most serials on Bynge.