If you are a Bollywood lover, then you must have read stories on entertainment and Bollywood celebrities on Pinkvilla’s website. Pinkvilla, founded in 2007, is a renowned name in the entertainment media industry made by a software engineer, Nandini Shenoy, who also loves Bollywood.
Just one click, and you will have all the information at your hand, about your favourite celebs and a glimpse of their life. In recent years, Pinkvilla has become a go-to entertainment website for millions of fans and Bollywood lovers.
Nandini Shenoy is the woman who made this successful media platform out of her love for Bollywood. She designed a perfectly amazing platform to get all the little gossip of beloved B-town celebs to the ears of their fans.
Beginning of the Journey
Nandini Shenoy was born and brought up in Mangalore. She was raised in a family of brilliant engineers and she too went to the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka to pursue her education in Engineering.
Further, she moved to the United States at Rutgers University for her Master’s in ECE. In 2004, her career reached its height when she got a job at Microsoft in Seattle as a Software Engineer.
She always cherished her work as a software engineer, but the whole dynamic changed when her craze and fondness for Bollywood got into her mind and she brainstormed a venture. It was during her job at Microsoft when the idea of Pinkvilla struck her.
Startup Story of Pinkvilla
When the idea of Pinkvilla came to her, she did not immediately quit her job at Microsoft. She started to brainstorm ideas and thought about creating a digital platform of her own.
With this idea in mind and another job at hand — the series of countless work and sleepless weekends came into the picture. Nandini began churning out code alongside her husband, Jeu George, to create a digital platform for Pinkvilla.
At the time, the idea was the perfect one because there weren’t any online repositories focused on Bollywood; thus the idea caught on quickly.
In the initial stages, the site was available at Orkut, where people used to have easy access and later on, it came on Google. In the initial stage, Nandini used to publicise her content on Orkut, where she used to gain netizens.
As she was living in the US, she didn’t have easy access to Bollywood magazines or any information, but she continued to dig deep. She continued blogging about Bollywood, beauty, gossip and fashion for a long time, which a large group of people liked.
The Rise of Pinkvilla & Bollywood Stories
It was in 2009 when the website hit a peak when Nandini found party photos of Sonam Kapoor and posted them on Pinkvilla.
Pretty soon the photos went viral and the site received a significant amount of recognition, especially when the Hindustan Times contacted her and asked for the photos. They told her they would like to use the photos, and in return, they would provide her with a backlink.
Furthermore, the site grew exponentially. For the first four years, Nandini had to put all her efforts in for Pinkvilla, so she finally quit her job at Microsoft and began to build a community.
In 2010, she moved ahead by making a team of photographers, editors, and writers and built production houses and a PR network. By that time, she had sources in Mumbai who would tip her with gossip and photos.
To get a close connection with the lives of Bollywood celebs and get daily insights, she set up an editorial team in Mumbai in 2013. Since then, the company has never looked back and now Pinkvilla is an enormous community which is growing and spreading craze and excitement.
In this journey, selecting the right group of people in the Pinkvilla community was a big step. Currently, the site is profitable and has major deals and collaborations with numerous production houses for ad sales and recognition.
Now, the website has over 45 million page views and attracts more than 8 million visitors. From the early days of putting about 20-25 stories a day, they have levelled up to 100 stories a day.
Nandini has successfully led Pinkvilla and made it a far-reaching website. It was her dedication, perseverance and intuition that turned her company into the entertainment face of the Indian digital ecosystem. It has now been fifteen years of journey and she has continued to foresee the evolution of the brand.
