When budding poet Ankur Mishra couldn’t find a dedicated online poetry platform to share his works, he decided to create one himself.

“I bought a domain and started putting out my works. Soon I got requests from other people to make it public,” he says.

Launched in 2018, Kavishala started off as an online platform for poetry lovers and in a few months expanded its scope to offer experiential components like meetups and poetry workshops. In less than two years, Kavishala has grown into a community of more than 30,000 poets, with over 60,000 works across eight Indian languages and English.

“We see at least 50 new users every day and the daily page visits average at 30K+, touching a million monthly views,” says Ankur, a 27-year-old engineering graduate. “At the moment our annual turnover is about Rs 12 lakh (approximately USD 17,300) and most of it comes from monetizing online traffic. We are looking at expanding our revenue streams through a merchandising platform, online poetry video series, and offline offerings. In the long run, we want the experiential offering to be the primary revenue model for Kavishala.”

Kavishala began using the WhatsApp Business app in October 2018 and today it is the primary engagement channel for experiential offerings.

"Switching to the WhatsApp Business app ensured that we answered queries in time, gained trust, which resulted in better sign up conversion numbers”

“Our challenge was to provide timely updates on events and answer queries. Switching to the WhatsApp Business app ensured that we answered queries in time, gained trust, which resulted in better sign up conversion numbers,” says Ankur, crediting WhatsApp for helping drive a 25-to-30 percent increase in site visits.

Additionally, the auto reply feature helps Kavishala respond to FAQs.

“It ensures that routine queries are answered while our efforts can be directed to things that are more important.”

Kavishala now has sights set on expanding to countries like the UAE, the U.S. and the U.K., and the team is also working on creating a new platform and an app. What started as a place for poetry lovers to connect has turned into a flourishing business.