Plop: Stories that Pop This start-up being incubated at NSRCEL offers stories in a completely different, chat-based format.

Penbound is a startup founded by Anushka Shetty and Vineet Shetty. They believe that their product Plop will re-introduce storytelling to the world. They decided to develop the idea when they pitched it to a group of publishers who, they say, loved it in the Delhi World Book Fair.

Co-founder – Anushka Shetty

Co-founder Vineet Shetty

“Attention spans of the youth today have shrunk immensely with some studies claiming that it is only 7 minutes long. This is a product of our digitalized society and the shorter attention spans have had a huge impact on reading. The youth prefer to read text messages on their smartphones rather than an old-fashioned book,” explains Anushka.

Plop: Stories that Pop, capitalizes on this by offering stories in a chat-based format. It allows users to read ‘chat stories’ which are essentially digital plays which are far easier to consume. These chat stories are more immersive than regular stories, using audio/visual cues and decision trees to enhance the reading experience. For example, eerie music might play during a scary or tense part of the story. Through decision trees, readers can control the outcome of the story by pursuing different paths at specific points in the story.

Plop- Stories that Pop

Penbound is a B2C digital company. They are currently experimenting with referral programs and performance marketing campaigns on Google, Facebook and Instagram. They are currently working with a few publishers, some established authors and college students.

Pre-seed funding support from NSRCEL

The founders acknowledge their mentors at the N.S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), the incubator located in IIMB, for helping them connect to and network with some distinguished professionals in the industry. They have received pre-seed funding from IIM Bangalore.

By merging the ancient art of storytelling with the millennial art of texting, Penbound wants to be the first global platform for conversational stories on which publishers and writers around the world can create and monetize their stories.

Check Plopnow out at https://plop.app.link/xJ6cCCtp5N

www.plopnow.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plopnow/

Dhruva Jaishankar

Dhruva Jaishankar is a student with interests in a variety of topics including Economics, Business, evolving technologies and human behavior. He also enjoys reading and writing. He can be reached at dhruvajaish@gmail.com.