From 2008 to 2014, I ran YKA as an ‘initiative’ only. I hadn’t registered it legally. Back in 2008, startups weren’t a thing, and no one was willing to fund anything in media x tech. It was only on Jan 15, 2014, that I registered YKA as a company, exactly 8 years ago today.
8 years ago today, YKA had 500~ people writing on the platform. Today, more than 127K people write on it.
In 2015, we raised our first round of funding with a small team of 6 and only a 1000 lifetime writers. We had a simple mission statement – do everything you can to enable young people to speak up.
2015-2018, posts by everyday young people started some of the earliest and biggest social justice youth movements of our times – from Pinjra Tod to Happy To Bleed.
2018-2020, YKA’s user base shot up from 20,000 writers to 45000 writers. And in 2 years from then, we went from 45,000 to 1,27,000.
On average, every month, we add close to 3000 writers to the platform without spending a buck on marketing. That average is likely to double in just 3 months. If we don’t do any social media distribution of our content, we’d be over 200,000 writers by the end of 2022.
We’ve been building in stealth, and we will continue.:)
Here’s what YKA members said when I shared about this journey on social media:
And then some more
Some peers & well-wishers who’ve seen us through the journey
If anyone asks you where young India writes on some of the most pressing issues of our times, you know where to send them 🙂
How has your YKA journey been like? Drop a comment on this post, I’d love to know more about it. Maybe share your author profiles? I would love to follow you & your work!