WEBVTT 00:00:01.032 --> 00:00:02.562 Look all around you. 00:00:02.586 --> 00:00:08.286 Whether you're in a subway, a park, an airport, a restaurant, 00:00:08.310 --> 00:00:10.029 even at this conference, 00:00:10.053 --> 00:00:13.441 all of you have a phone in your hands or maybe in your pockets. 00:00:13.465 --> 00:00:15.291 How many of you have a book? 00:00:15.315 --> 00:00:16.465 Very few, right? 00:00:17.069 --> 00:00:18.946 This is the sight that used to greet me 00:00:18.970 --> 00:00:21.077 every time I walked out of my office block. 00:00:21.101 --> 00:00:24.752 I was surrounded by a sea of 20-something professionals 00:00:24.776 --> 00:00:26.243 glued to their phones. 00:00:26.560 --> 00:00:29.038 And not a single one had a book in their hands. 00:00:29.600 --> 00:00:32.195 And this used to make me very, very frustrated. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:32.505 --> 00:00:34.671 I was a bookworm all my life. 00:00:34.695 --> 00:00:37.403 Books formed the milestones of my life. 00:00:37.427 --> 00:00:40.474 The first man I fell in love with was Mr. Darcy. 00:00:40.990 --> 00:00:46.080 I first read "Harry Potter" when I was 21, on a summer break from college. 00:00:46.601 --> 00:00:50.990 And I remember the first night I spent in a little flat I bought in my mid-20s, 00:00:51.014 --> 00:00:52.426 very proudly, 00:00:52.450 --> 00:00:55.355 and I spent the whole night reading "The Da Vinci Code." 00:00:55.379 --> 00:00:57.688 And then I'm going to make a terrible confession: 00:00:57.712 --> 00:01:01.391 even today, when I'm low, I get into bed with "War and Peace." 00:01:01.415 --> 00:01:02.565 Don't laugh. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:02.589 --> 00:01:03.620 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:04.030 --> 00:01:07.331 But I was also like all those people I saw around me: 00:01:07.355 --> 00:01:09.029 I, too, lived on my phone. 00:01:09.053 --> 00:01:11.537 I ordered my groceries online, 00:01:11.561 --> 00:01:15.695 and soon my app knew that I needed a monthly dose of diapers. 00:01:16.339 --> 00:01:19.220 I booked my cinemas on my phone. 00:01:19.244 --> 00:01:21.913 I booked planes on my phone. 00:01:21.937 --> 00:01:26.326 And when I did the long commute back home like most urban Indians, 00:01:26.350 --> 00:01:28.143 and was stuck in traffic, 00:01:28.167 --> 00:01:32.057 I passed the time on WhatsApp, video-chatting my twin. 00:01:33.437 --> 00:01:37.803 I was part of an extraordinary revolution that was happening in India. 00:01:37.827 --> 00:01:41.957 Indians are the second-largest users of smartphones in the world. 00:01:42.466 --> 00:01:46.323 And data prices have been slashed so radically 00:01:46.347 --> 00:01:50.045 that half of urban India and even a part of rural India 00:01:50.069 --> 00:01:53.347 now have a smartphone with a data connection in their hands. 00:01:53.371 --> 00:01:55.204 And if you know anything about India, 00:01:55.228 --> 00:01:58.554 you'll know that "half" means, like, all of America or something. 00:01:58.578 --> 00:02:00.125 You know, it's large numbers. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:00.149 --> 00:02:01.299 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:02.220 --> 00:02:04.998 And these numbers are just growing and growing and growing. 00:02:05.022 --> 00:02:06.204 They're exploding. 00:02:06.228 --> 00:02:08.300 And what they're doing is empowering Indians 00:02:08.324 --> 00:02:10.782 in all kinds of extraordinary ways. 00:02:10.806 --> 00:02:14.244 And yet, none of these changes that I was seeing around me 00:02:14.268 --> 00:02:17.174 were reflected in my world, my world of books. 00:02:18.006 --> 00:02:21.101 I live in a country the size of Europe, 00:02:21.125 --> 00:02:23.594 and it only has 50 decent bookshops. 00:02:24.053 --> 00:02:27.290 And Indians just didn't seem to want to read for fun. 00:02:27.314 --> 00:02:29.825 So if you look at all the best-seller lists in India, 00:02:29.849 --> 00:02:32.070 what you'll always find in the best-seller list 00:02:32.094 --> 00:02:33.909 is exam and professional guides. 00:02:33.933 --> 00:02:37.928 Imagine if you found the SAT guides as the "New York Times" number one seller, 00:02:37.953 --> 00:02:39.417 month after month. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:41.659 --> 00:02:46.459 And yet, the smartphone revolution was creating readers and writers 00:02:46.484 --> 00:02:48.229 of a different kind. 00:02:48.254 --> 00:02:51.095 Whether it was on Facebook or WhatsApp, 00:02:51.119 --> 00:02:55.960 Indians were writing and sharing and reading all kinds of things: 00:02:55.984 --> 00:02:59.698 terrible jokes, spurious pop history, 00:02:59.722 --> 00:03:02.398 long, emotional confessions, 00:03:02.422 --> 00:03:04.593 diatribes against the government. 00:03:04.617 --> 00:03:07.903 And as I read and shared these things, I wondered to myself, 00:03:07.927 --> 00:03:12.189 "Could I get these writers and these readers, 00:03:12.213 --> 00:03:14.546 could I turn them into my readers?" NOTE Paragraph 00:03:15.212 --> 00:03:17.895 And so I left my plush corner office 00:03:17.919 --> 00:03:22.291 and my job as the publisher of India's top publishing company, 00:03:22.315 --> 00:03:23.993 and I set up on my own. 00:03:24.017 --> 00:03:30.720 I moved into a single large room in a cheap bohemian district of Delhi, 00:03:30.744 --> 00:03:32.058 with a small team. 00:03:32.402 --> 00:03:35.376 And there, I set up a new kind of publishing house. 00:03:36.355 --> 00:03:39.765 A new kind of publishing house needs a new kind of reader 00:03:39.789 --> 00:03:41.322 and a new kind of book. 00:03:42.218 --> 00:03:45.138 And so I asked myself, "What would this new reader want? 00:03:45.162 --> 00:03:48.956 Would they prize urgency, relevance, 00:03:48.980 --> 00:03:51.258 timeliness, directness -- 00:03:51.282 --> 00:03:54.958 the very qualities they seem to want from their online services, 00:03:54.982 --> 00:03:58.120 indeed, the qualities they seem to want from life today?" NOTE Paragraph 00:03:59.149 --> 00:04:01.783 I knew that my readers were always on the go. 00:04:01.807 --> 00:04:04.728 I'd have to fit into their lifestyle and schedules. 00:04:04.752 --> 00:04:07.810 Would they actually want to read a 200-page book? 00:04:07.834 --> 00:04:10.947 Or would they want something a little bit more digestible? 00:04:11.676 --> 00:04:14.652 Indians are incredibly value-conscious, 00:04:14.676 --> 00:04:17.220 especially when it comes to their online reading. 00:04:17.244 --> 00:04:20.636 I knew I had to give them books under a dollar. 00:04:21.735 --> 00:04:25.167 And so my company was formed, and it was born. 00:04:25.191 --> 00:04:31.426 It was a platform where we created a list of stories designed for the smartphone, 00:04:31.450 --> 00:04:35.625 but it also allowed amateur writers to upload their own stories, 00:04:35.649 --> 00:04:38.220 so they could be showcased along with the very writers 00:04:38.244 --> 00:04:39.974 they read and admired. 00:04:39.998 --> 00:04:44.506 And we could also enter into other people's digital platforms. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:44.999 --> 00:04:46.785 So, imagine this: 00:04:46.809 --> 00:04:50.173 imagine you're a receptionist, you've had a long day at work, 00:04:50.197 --> 00:04:52.644 you book your cab in your ride-hailing app, 00:04:52.668 --> 00:04:54.007 it shows up, 00:04:54.031 --> 00:04:56.911 and you get into your car, and you lie back on your seat, 00:04:56.935 --> 00:04:59.101 and you put on your app. 00:04:59.125 --> 00:05:03.187 And you find a set of stories waiting for you, timed to your journey. 00:05:04.347 --> 00:05:06.514 Imagine you're a gay young woman, 00:05:06.538 --> 00:05:10.842 in a relatively conservative city like Lucknow, which lies near Delhi. 00:05:11.300 --> 00:05:14.022 There's no way your parents know about your sexuality. 00:05:14.046 --> 00:05:15.912 They'd completely freak out. 00:05:16.403 --> 00:05:22.315 Would you like lesbian love stories written in Hindi, priced under a dollar, 00:05:22.339 --> 00:05:24.728 to be read in the privacy of your phone? 00:05:25.244 --> 00:05:27.855 And could I match readers 00:05:27.879 --> 00:05:32.189 to the events that were taking place around them in real time? NOTE Paragraph 00:05:32.982 --> 00:05:37.156 So we published biographies of very famous politicians 00:05:37.180 --> 00:05:39.941 after they won big elections. 00:05:40.633 --> 00:05:44.188 When the supreme court decriminalized homosexuality, 00:05:44.212 --> 00:05:47.959 an LGBTQ collection was waiting on our home page. 00:05:48.482 --> 00:05:53.591 And when India's Toni Morrison, the great writer Mahasweta Devi died, 00:05:53.615 --> 00:05:57.460 our readers found a short story by her as soon as news hit. 00:05:58.046 --> 00:06:02.807 The idea was to be relevant to every moment of a reader's life. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:03.823 --> 00:06:05.157 Who are our readers? 00:06:05.562 --> 00:06:08.657 They're mostly young men under the age of 30. 00:06:08.681 --> 00:06:10.665 There's someone like Salil, 00:06:10.689 --> 00:06:13.768 who lives in a city where there isn't a modern bookshop. 00:06:13.792 --> 00:06:16.525 And he comes to our app almost every day. 00:06:16.852 --> 00:06:18.678 There's someone like Manoj, 00:06:18.702 --> 00:06:21.894 who mostly reads us during the long commute back home. 00:06:22.266 --> 00:06:25.861 And there's someone like Ahmed, who loves our nonfiction 00:06:25.885 --> 00:06:29.847 that he can read in a single sitting, and that's priced very low. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:30.831 --> 00:06:33.832 Imagine if you're like a young, techie boy 00:06:33.856 --> 00:06:38.187 in India's Silicon Valley city of Bangalore. 00:06:39.031 --> 00:06:41.578 And one day, you get an in-app notification 00:06:41.602 --> 00:06:45.053 and it says that your favorite actress has written a sexy short story 00:06:45.077 --> 00:06:46.672 and it's waiting for you. 00:06:46.696 --> 00:06:48.768 That's how we launched Juggernaut. 00:06:48.792 --> 00:06:53.188 We got a very famous ex-adult star, called Sunny Leone. 00:06:53.212 --> 00:06:56.347 She's India's most Googled person, as it happens. 00:06:56.371 --> 00:07:00.395 And we got her to write us a collection of sexy short stories 00:07:00.419 --> 00:07:02.958 that we published every night for a week. 00:07:02.982 --> 00:07:04.410 And it was a sensation. 00:07:04.434 --> 00:07:08.034 I mean, no one could believe that we'd asked Sunny Leone to write. 00:07:08.466 --> 00:07:09.626 But she did, 00:07:09.650 --> 00:07:12.212 and she proved everyone wrong, 00:07:12.236 --> 00:07:14.577 and she found this immense readership. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:15.084 --> 00:07:20.704 And just as we've redefined what a book is and how a reader behaves, 00:07:20.728 --> 00:07:23.204 we're rethinking who an author is. 00:07:23.228 --> 00:07:24.881 In our amateur writing platform, 00:07:24.905 --> 00:07:27.915 we have writers that range from teenagers to housewives. 00:07:28.315 --> 00:07:30.397 And they're writing all kinds of things. 00:07:30.421 --> 00:07:35.863 It starts as small as a poem, an essay, a single short story ... 00:07:36.292 --> 00:07:39.739 Fifty percent of them are returning to the app to write again. 00:07:40.514 --> 00:07:41.999 Take someone like Neeraj. 00:07:42.024 --> 00:07:47.028 He's a middle-aged executive, wife, two kids, a good job. 00:07:47.053 --> 00:07:48.815 And Neeraj loves to read. 00:07:48.839 --> 00:07:51.673 But every time Neeraj read a book that he loved, 00:07:51.697 --> 00:07:53.871 he was also filled with regret. 00:07:53.895 --> 00:07:56.505 He wondered to himself if he could write, too. 00:07:56.529 --> 00:07:58.974 He was convinced he had stories in his mind. 00:07:59.450 --> 00:08:04.410 But time and real life had happened, and he couldn't really manage it. 00:08:04.434 --> 00:08:07.648 And then he heard about the Juggernaut writer's platform. 00:08:07.672 --> 00:08:11.522 And what he loved about it was that he felt this was a place 00:08:11.546 --> 00:08:14.612 where he could stand head and shoulders, equally, 00:08:14.637 --> 00:08:17.141 with the very writers that he most admired. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:17.165 --> 00:08:18.831 And so he began to write. 00:08:19.252 --> 00:08:23.014 And he snatched a minute here, an hour there, 00:08:23.038 --> 00:08:25.252 in between flights in airports, 00:08:25.276 --> 00:08:28.240 late at night, when he had a little bit of time on his hands. 00:08:28.867 --> 00:08:31.184 And he wrote this extraordinary story for us. 00:08:31.208 --> 00:08:34.033 He wrote a story about a family of assassins 00:08:34.057 --> 00:08:37.057 who lived in the winding lanes of Old Delhi. 00:08:37.371 --> 00:08:40.251 We loved it, it was so fresh and original. 00:08:40.275 --> 00:08:44.712 And before Neeraj knew it, he'd not only scored a film deal 00:08:44.736 --> 00:08:48.011 but also a second contract to write another story. 00:08:48.323 --> 00:08:52.190 Neeraj's story is one of the most read stories on our app. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:53.619 --> 00:08:56.135 My journey is very, very young. 00:08:56.159 --> 00:08:59.911 We're a two-year-old company, and we have a long way to go. 00:09:00.984 --> 00:09:04.004 But we already, and we will by the end of this year, 00:09:04.029 --> 00:09:07.984 have about half a million stories, many priced at under a dollar. 00:09:09.159 --> 00:09:11.935 Most of our readers love reading 00:09:11.959 --> 00:09:15.093 and trying out authors they've never, ever heard of before. 00:09:15.117 --> 00:09:17.577 Thirty percent of our home page reads 00:09:17.601 --> 00:09:21.010 comes out of the writing that comes from our writer's platform. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:22.210 --> 00:09:24.321 By being everywhere, 00:09:24.345 --> 00:09:26.925 by being accessible and relevant, 00:09:27.734 --> 00:09:30.514 I hope to make reading a daily habit, 00:09:30.538 --> 00:09:33.761 as easy and effortless as checking your email, 00:09:34.800 --> 00:09:36.490 as booking a ticket online 00:09:36.514 --> 00:09:38.101 or ordering your groceries. 00:09:38.800 --> 00:09:40.395 And as for me, 00:09:40.419 --> 00:09:44.516 I've discovered that as I entered the six-inch world of the smartphone, 00:09:44.540 --> 00:09:47.006 my own world just got very, very big. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:48.484 --> 00:09:49.682 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:49.706 --> 00:09:53.586 (Applause)