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Delhi-based mobile entertainment app Roast has pivoted its ‘entertainment in shorts’ app to a new avtaar.
According to a company statement, it is a first-of-its-kind humour destination app where users can roast (criticise) regular, trending or boring news in a funky style, can share their daily experiences, etc. The app showcases content for almost all kinds of topics from all over the world.
Roast was launched in May 2016 by Anchal Singh and Aamer Rushnaiwala, with an aim to be a premiere micro-sharing entertainment platform on mobile, catering to the ‘entertainment in short’ need of witty Indians and people who love to talk, converse and take a stand on anything and everything.
Initially, the idea was to let users find topics to roast about on a daily basis on the app, at the same time sharing their view points. The topics are introduced on a daily basis by the Roast app team.
“However, we saw that people have started connecting the concept withTwitter-likee platform,” said Aamer.
“So as you say ‘consumer is king,’ we realised very early that something is clearly not working here. Hence, we started moving on to the other version that we had thought of,” he added.
The new version of the app features a section called ‘Affairs,’ wherein one can read floating roasts and have a hearty laugh. Another addition is Roast TV, where one can get access to all the hilarious and witty videos that are present in the web at one place.
Also, users can write/roast their views in existing, funky, roastable categories such as ‘Band bajao netas ki, Croods attire’ etc.
As stated by Aamer, “We have a lot of news applications right now, but only information is always boring, so we thought of giving users a roasting kind of platform where in they can roast politicians, celebrities and everything that’s there. That’s our favourite thing to do. So, this is a platform where, whatever is happening around us, is roasted in a very minimal way.“
The Roast team is currently planning to build its user base and spread the word about the platform.
Earlier, in May 2016, the company secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Indian Angel Network (IAN), led by Mumbai-based Angel & PE Investor Sanjay Mehta.
While this concept is already popular in the west, in India Facebook seems to be the most widely accepted medium to put forward thoughts on any new updates in the world.
According to stats, Indians, on an average, spend 3 hours 18 minutes a day on their smartphones. Of the various app categories, social and messaging apps have seen a growth of 203% in downloads in the last one year.
The app is currently available on Google Play store.
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