Audiobooks have now become a popular content format consumed by people worldwide. While apps like Audible, Blinkist, Pocket FM, and Kuku FM are some of the biggest players in this space, another bootstrapped and profitable audiobook platform, GIGL is proliferating in India.
Founded by Hemant Pant, a YouTuber-turned-entrepreneur, GIGL stands for ‘Great Ideas Great Life’ providing an immersive learning experience through audiobooks, summaries, and online courses.
GIGL isn’t just another ed-tech startup or an audio platform, it’s a movement reshaping the landscape of education and accessibility in India. With over 33 lakh users, it has been profitable since the beginning as most of its marketing has been done with its YouTube channel followed by millions of people.
Its YouTube channel, GREAT IDEAS GREAT LIFE, has over 6 Million subscribers where Pant makes videos on book summaries, self-improvement, business and money. With the GIGL app, he is trying to provide a one-stop platform for learning resources including audiobooks and courses.
Startup Story of GIGL
Hemant Pant, the founder and CEO at GIGL, has a background in Electrical Engineering. He completed his Master’s in Instrumentation Engineering and then worked as an S.D.O in the state electricity department of Himachal Pradesh for 5 years after completing his master’s.
After working with the government for 5 years as a Class 1 Gazetted Officer, Pant decided to start an ed-tech company as he was already making some educational videos on YouTube in his free time.
He left his government job as soon as his wife Jyoti completed her PhD in instrumentation engineering from NIT Jalandhar. They both moved to Bangalore with their 3-month-old son and were incubated by NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies) 10k startups in Bangalore.
Hemant loves reading, and just because of his passion, he got inspired by a German application called Blinkist. This application was not for Indian users and definitely not for Hindi users who struggle with English.
He noticed that a lot of people in India struggle to understand complicated English books. So, he decided to make summaries of those books in simple Hindi language, making them easy to understand for everyone.
Now, imagine getting quick summaries of awesome books right at your fingertips! That’s how the GIGL app came into existence and today it is being used by millions of people.
GIGL was the first audiobook summary platform in India. Hemant created GIGL with only 10 book summaries with the commitment to provide at least 1 book summary in a week. GIGL has grown a lot since then!
Today, GIGL has over 1250 book summaries and many video courses. And it’s not just in Hindi anymore, Dr. Jyoti, co-founder of GIGL, came up with the idea of making book summaries in different Indian languages, making it easier for everyone to understand, no matter where they’re from.
GIGL is now making summaries of all kinds of books, from the really popular ones to the old favourites. These summaries are available in free and premium versions in different languages like Hindi, English, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu.
Hemant firmly believes that providing genuine value is the key to winning over users. He says, “Explain difficult concepts in a simple way, as they need to be understandable for a 5th grader or a Hindi medium student.”
