Rising Star: Biswatma Nayak, Co-founder, Chingari

Co-Founder of the popular short-video app Chingari, Biswatma Nayak had built his first social app product in the first year of his professional career. A BTech student from SOA university, he had begun his journey in the industry nine years ago as an android app developer and has since built 10-15 social media automation tools, dating apps and scaled them for over 1M user base.

It took him two years to build a short-video content sharing app where people can watch and share entertaining content easily. As Co-Founder and Head of Engineering at Chingari, Nayak takes care of product growth, software development, and sets milestones.

Asked how different it is working at Chingari compared to his previous experiences, he said they have a team that is passionate about what they’re doing, which makes being the Co-founder even more fulfilling.

“Every day, we are coming up with new ideas to include in our app. We launched our in-app shop feature, which is great. As such there’s no major difference in my area of work because in my previous job also, I was developing roadmaps for the system and product growth, and managing the overall software development cycle.”

The rise of ‘Made in India’ in digital media content, Nayak says, has pushed the short video user base back to 100%, and Chingari has been able to retain over 40-65% of users. He said most of the new users are from tier-2 and tier-3 cities and beyond.

Speaking about his vision, he said, “We started to make it for India, but Chingari is ready for the world. We have users from across the world. We are focused on making a mark with the right mix of technology and content and opening the floodgates for Indian digital media content. We plan to make Chingari not only a short-form video app, but we’re also working on building a super entertainment app for Bharat, where users can access short video, live TV, social commerce, etc.”

Recalling the app’s recognition by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nayak says it was his biggest achievement. The app has also been recognised by Union Minister of Law and Justice, Electronics and Information Technology and Communications, Ravi Shankar Prasad.

So what part about his role does he like the best? He said he gets to be very engaged in nearly every element of the business as the Co-founder. “I love overseeing the development of existing and new features and services for our application. I like collaborating with our marketing team and helping to define the best business strategy. I have a vision about where I want this company to go. I’m directing different teams in that direction. It is difficult but it keeps me motivated on a daily basis.”

Nayak said Elon Musk has always been his idol and inspired him to work hard and think out of the box. He said while the pandemic has taken an unexpected hit on many industries, people have adapted to the new normal. “The pandemic has brought many things to the table: discovering new skills and knowledge, staying home with family is fun, practising time management for being more productive, and understanding the value of being social.”

He said if not the Co-founder at Chingari, he would have remained in the app development industry.

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