Edutainment is an important form of content. It has several advantages over regular form of contents, i.e. articles and text, because it can capture our attention and keep us engaged while other form of contents struggle to do so.
While internet is buzzing with these type of contents, BuzzFeed’s quizzes has taken over the world, but in Bangladesh it is quite difficult to find diversified and entertaining contents.
There is a general dearth of Bengali content online. Although it has been growing pretty well recently but that does not apply for all areas and types. Edutainment, in the form of quiz, is one of those areas. It is hard to find a dedicated platform or regular one that hosts quiz or similar kind of edutainment content that can capture the imagination of young people. It means there is a gap in the market and there is a need for quiz type content as well.
Quizards, an online portal based in Dhaka, aims to fill this gap. Quizards, through its website, offers daily dose of quizzes for curious minds and offers a variety of contents around quiz.
Quizards, a well designed website, started in 2014. Today, the platform hosts hundreds of various types of quizzes ranging from sports to politics, history to science, film to music, books to writers, filmmakers to actors and more. Along with quizzes, the portal also hosts different types of fun content i.e. infographic and stories.
Dipesh Dewan, co-founder of Quizards said “when we started we wanted to serve the folks who practice general knowledge through quizzes, but we found that it was too small of a niche for us; as a result, we started developing quizzes as a micro-content to promote it to a larger community from school to university level”.
Exploring a new opportunity
As I wrote before, quiz is not entirely new type of content online. There are websites and media companies that have done pretty commendable work in this space but “a website delivering a proper Bangla language content in the way we are doing it was not there” said Dipesh.
As previously mentioned, Quizards offers quiz along with articles and infographics. Dipesh claims quiz has a universal appeal across the board and when they develop any content they keep that in mind. Since they offer a wide range of variety and generate content for a wider audience, it helps them to serve a quite big audience.
Competition-wise, there is no such direct competitor yet but Champs21, one of the leading education based websites in the country, also known for hosting the national spelling bee contest, operates in the space of edutainment. But Dipesh said “they are not a competitor in the traditional sense of the word as they are not serving the niche we are serving. Besides, quizzes are our primary content, which separates us from others in the market”.
Quizards has a small team of 11 people which includes students from renowned universities and colleges in the capital. When creating a content, team Quizards looks for quality over quantity. Everyone of the team now largely works as part timer but Dipesh hopes things will change soon. "In the near future, we are planning to put together a full-time team”.
Currently, the website attracts around 5k-6k traffic a month but Dipesh has big plans. They want to take the number to 100 to 200k a month and then go for further expansion and growth. Dipesh said “once we get to around 100-200k traffic, we will be looking for developing our business and further financial backups from external sources”.
[su_note note_color="#f9fbfe" text_color="#000000" radius="15"]This story is part of the Promoting Bangladesh 2016, an initiative to honor and promote excellence on the Bangladesh Web starting with Websites & Mobile Apps. Promoting Bangladesh is a collaboration between G&R and Future Startup.[/su_note]
