WHAT IT IS
Katha is a mobile app that connects interesting voice content creators with listeners. Essentially a voice version of Twitter, with an interface dedicated for sending and receiving voice clips.
It’s designed and built locally and founded by Mudith Uswatta and Mahen Rathnayaka; the two are co-founders. Mahen is the CEO currently and works on it full time while Mudith works on it part time.
HOW IT WORKS
Anyone can create a channel on Katha. Others can subscribe to a channel to receive the voice clips they send out. Other than messaging all your subscribers you can also send private messages to you contacts on the app.
Subscription to channels can be free or paid for. The Katha team encourages anyone who wants to run a public channel (use Katha for anything other than private messaging) to become a verified channel. This essentially means that such channels have been personally curated by the Katha team. Verified channels are indicated by a special marker on the app.
Length of messages between normal users is limited at 5 mins. Verified channels can send out longer messages.
Katha also offers question and answer channels. These channels enable subscribers to send questions to the channel owner. The channel owner can then answer them as a private message.
HOW KATHA PLANS ON MAKING MONEY
Creating channels on Katha is free. The team plans to monetize by taking a commission on channels that charge a fee from their subscribers (in the form of monthly subscription). The content creator (channel) will receive the lion share of the revenue while Katha takes a small cut.
Katha are also looking at partnering with brands for promotions etc.
HOW WE GOT STARTED
Mudith and Mahen were friends for some time and both were interested in startups. They decided to participate in the Colombo Hackathon and pitch something even though they had no idea or any product to demo. They showed up and pitched an idea that was quite different to Katha. Some of the judges were people running the Lankan Angel Network (LAN) and they offered an opportunity in a venture capital competition that was running at the time called Venture Engine.
So they found ourselves in the middle of this competition and refined their idea based on the feedback they received from pitching this to investors and other entrepreneurs. They made it to the finals of this competition and LAN wanted to fund them by providing some seed capital to run a pilot test of the concept.
Finalizing the specifics of the deal took some time as there were various issues such as Mudith not being there full-time, some investors not being based in Sri Lanka etc. The team got the investment around May 2015 and got started; since June they’ve been developing the app.
WHO IS USING IT RIGHT NOW
The team is currently running a beta test with a limited test group of users. They plan to launch the app publicly in November.
They have already partnered with companies who will be their first channels. A few are research companies; they will be using it to disseminate market research using the app. Then there are channels like Yamu who will be running question and answer type of channels.
Katha strongly appeals to young musicians and bands. Local activists have also expressed interest in using the app. It was recently introduced at a conference by the head of Groudviews (a popular political blog) as a tool they plan to use next year.