Ep. 45 App for Teens to Build Good Habits an Interview with Kountinya Sai

How does the sport of cricket get more viewers than the NBA? Why does an app featuring games of cricket get a mind-blowing 200 million downloads? You’ll find out all of this and more in this episode featuring Kountinya Sai.

Show Notes
Guest Profile

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After earning an MBA in 1998, Kountinya Sai started in the advertising business. During the dotcom boom, he built India's largest online bookstore. It had over one million books—all the books you could buy on Amazon.com, you could buy on SIFI mall.com.

In 2012, he joined a sports publisher and started handling advertising sales for them globally. They went from 10 million downloads to 200 million downloads in a couple of years. They were the largest sports publisher in the mobile space.

“We started taking that model to other countries. So we took it to Canada, South Africa, UK, Australia. Cricket as a game has transformed to target the younger audience, so that's where the advertisers need to spend their money. The game is getting onto platforms, which were not there earlier. For example, mobile. Let's say they're commuting to work in New York…. or San Francisco, when a big cricket match is going on in India. They cannot watch the game in front of their television sets at home. So their platform of choice became mobile. They're watching the games through our app.”

Through helping his daughter with a runathon fundraiser, marketing genius Kountinya Sai realized that teens need motivation to build habits like exercising and doing the next right thing. So he started building his product, a gamified rewards wallet for teens to practice good habits. Find out more by listening to the episode.

Bio

Twenty years ago, Kountinya Sai started his career by joining a dotcom start-up. His world has turned a full circle as he launches his own startup: Harmoney.