On our birthday, we count our blessings—and make a big wish for your support. Splainer needs to raise money to extend our runway in an extremely difficult funding climate… I explain why.
Editor’s note: If you’re looking for exit polls and all the rest, we have extended coverage in the headlines.
Written by: Lakshmi Chaudhry, Founder & Editor
Splainer: The backstory
Splainer was born in the midst of the grayest days of the pandemic. That moment in history has forever shaped our mission. I conceived of splainer as your friend. To help you make sense of the bad or complicated stuff—and remind you of all that is weird, wonderful, and wacky in this world. For the past four years, we’ve all been on a giant rollercoaster. The world keeps happening to humanity—and humans keep happening to the world. But we have kept on carrying on—together. And it’s been a great run!
Our mission: From the very start, we built our product around you. We don’t claim to keep democracy alive, or do Pulitzer-winning reportage. But we have done our very best to make it effortless for you to be well-informed—in an extremely noisy, negative, and overwhelming news environment. Let’s face it: It’s like a giant garbage dump out there.
What we do: As a mission, it sounds more modest. But it is, in fact, far more challenging than churning out hundreds of mindless news ‘curations’ to run up traffic numbers. We have to wade through the muck day after day after day. Spend hours sifting through clickbait, pop up ads, incomplete information, bad reporting, terrible writing... Then weave and distil the valuable bits together to build a single edition—that is smart, engaging, easy to read—but never dumbed down. Yes, our burn out rates are high.
Life with splainer: I’m proud that we’ve managed to do so very much—without a jot of institutional funding. Splainer remains a subscriber-supported product, to this day. Here are some of the milestones of the last 12-18 months:
- Executed a sweeping (and gorgeous) redesign—making us the prettiest news site in India:)
- We redid the app so it’s every bit as pretty and useful.
- Launched a highly successful weekend edition—Advisory—which has become our subscribers’ go-to for reccos on what to read, watch, listen, travel etc.
- With it, we introduced a bookmark feature so you can always save what you find more useful.
- Experimented with events—which didn’t work all that well, tbh, because we don’t have a person to dedicate to community-building.
- Added multiple tools to help you share splainer—be it gift links, free one-month referrals, or highly discounted gift subs.
- Most recently, we’ve expanded into a newsmagazine show on YouTube—and a freemium newsletter on Substack.
Why this a remarkable achievement: We have done all of that with a tiny staff of six people—including me. It is astonishing for a newsroom of our size to produce so much—of such quality and consistency, day after day. It fills me with amazement and gratitude every day.
The funding crunch, explained
We were funded from the very beginning by our subscribers. You were our first investors, our founding members—our true friends & family. Splainer would not exist without you. Today, splainer needs your help again. And here’s why:
One: The funding climate is dire—as is the news environment. Hell, even the Associated Press is asking for donations these days. This is doubly so for splainer—which is a Singapore-based company (for good reasons). Over the past 12 months, new RBI rules have made it near-impossible for individual investors to send funds outside the country. A number of would-be investors in India have been blocked by long and arduous banking processes—clearly designed to wear them down. In other words, our primary source of support has been mostly blocked by larger changes in the regulatory environment.
Two: I’ve put my money into the company to make up some of the difference. And we’ve had some overseas investors who’ve pitched in. We now have enough to keep us going on the editorial end—but not to help us become a proper business. We need resources (hires + budget) whose only job is to focus on revenue. We don’t have the funds to hire the right person. But without revenue, it becomes hard to convince funds to give us money to make those spends. Round and round we go. We’re stuck in a very similar conundrum with growth.
The result: is that splainer is both doing commendably well and standing still. It is easy to see the potential in the many new directions we’re attempting—but they will remain “potential” if we don’t raise enough money to make that jump—be it in terms of revenue or growth.
What we need: is pretty straightforward:
- If you live outside India, please consider becoming investors—or connecting us with other overseas investors. This is our best and easiest road to fundraising. Please email me directly at lakshmi@splainer.in.
- Buy a founding membership—ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 100,000. You won’t get a piece of the company, but we give you a load of free subscriptions to share with whoever you please.
- Gift subscriptions to friends and family—at a hefty 33% discount.
- Buy bulk subs at an even greater discount for your workplace or institution. Please reach out to our team at talktous@splainer.in.
- Renew your subscription—an ongoing commitment keeps our bottomline steady, at the very least.
The bottomline: I leave you with this. The Guardian is funded by just 8% of its readers. I’m asking you to be our 8%.
