From Near Shutdown To Rs 300 Crore Company: Success Story Of STAGE Founder Vinay Singhal – News18

Everyone aspires to make it big in their professional endeavour, but there are only a few who make it possible with their sheer dedication and hard work. One such inspiring story is of businessman Vinay Singhal. He launched a viral content platform named WittyFeed with his friends, Shashank Vaishnav and Praveen Singhal, after completing his graduation. The trio started it as a Facebook page and soon expanded its influence worldwide.

Having a team of 125 employees, the company’s annual turnover was valued at Rs 40 crore. The company has offices in India, Singapore and America. Being valued at an impressive Rs 200 crore, the website achieved a remarkable milestone by accumulating 120 million unique month-on-month users. It generated an astonishing 420 million page views and accumulated a massive 2.5 billion impressions.

On November 26, 2018, the team faced a nightmarish situation. The WittyFeed Facebook page disappeared abruptly, and the company plunged into a financial crisis. Then, in 2019, the team ran out of funds and the prospect of closing the business was looming. Vinay didn’t lose hope and decided to rebuild and rethink how to get back on track.

Despite the challenging circumstances, Vinay Singhal continued to pay his employees’ salaries for three months. It was only a few months later that the idea for the STAGE app emerged. Recognising Vinay’s unwavering passion, his employees rallied behind him. A team of 54 people worked together to launch the new platform. On November 1, 2019, Vinay, along with his colleagues, launched the STAGE app. Today, the company is valued at over Rs 300 crore.

In the same year, Vinay, Shashank, and Praveen decided to build something like the OTT platform Netflix tailored specifically for the Indian audience.

They launched STAGE and this unique OTT platform is centred around artists and diverse regional dialects. Presently, STAGE has garnered over two million downloads and boasts a subscriber base of more than one lakh paying customers in the realm of hyperlocal video entertainment.

Vinay once shared in an interview that despite having credibility in the market, owing to WittyFeed, it still required a lot of effort to build their OTT platform from scratch.