Seekho and Outcome-Driven Learning

If you want info on questions like how to update your Aadhar card or increase views on your YouTube page, you do a search in all the usual sites like YouTube or Google. All free. So why would anyone pay for videos on such topics. Yet that is exactly what the Indian app named Seekho does. And millions pay for it. Dharmesh BA looks into Seekho.

“Why would someone pay for what they could find free? What is it about the product, the design, the psychology of the user journey that turns free content into a subscription business?”

 

On YouTube, anyone can upload anything. On Seekho, only curated “showrunners” can post stuff. The company picks potential content creators, gives them topics, posts their videos and sees how viewers respond. If it draws clicks, the creator is enlisted (and paid). Else he is dropped. This solves the quality-drowned-in-quantity problem of much of the free Internet.

 

How much does it cost? ₹1 for the first week, ₹149 per month thereafter (on Android, it’s slightly more on iOS). Or ₹599 per year. Since it is paid, there are no annoying ads.

“Seekho doesn’t want to be in the attention business. It wants to be in the trust business.”

 

How does Seekho enlist paying customers? Via targeted ads, split into multiple categories. Like “Know these government schemes you might be entitled to?”. Or “Want to make money via YouTube or Instagram?”. Or “Milk production falling? Here’s what you could do”. You get the idea. Ads are on everyday topics like cleaning. Organizing.

“Not glamorous, but deeply relatable.”

The enlisting strategy is clever:

“Seekho isn’t trying to look like Harvard Online. It’s trying to be the trusted elder sibling who knows a little more than you do.”

 

Seekho has categories for you to scroll through. The most popular ones are on how to grow your YouTube or Instagram followers. Then comes Sarkaari Kaam (driver’s license, registering a plot, discovering government schemes). Other categories include part-time income and small businesses.

 

Notice the pattern to the topics?

“Not abstract curiosity, not “learning for learning’s sake.” Seekho knows that in India, most learning is outcome-driven. Pottery isn’t about art - it’s about whether you can sell pots.”

 

Strangely, Seekho doesn’t have/allow some things we are used to on almost other (free) sites:

“No reviews. No ratings. No “10k people watched this.”

Yes, there are Share and Bookmark buttons. The Like and Comments are only visible to the content creator and serve as feedback, they are not for the public forum. This avoids arguments and nonsensical comments drowning things.

 

In a country like India, one size never fits all. Therefore, Seekho has different versions for Tamil (Arivu) and Telugu (Nerchuko), a separate one for kids.

 

The moral of the story? Free is obviously advantageous, but it also makes it hard to find what you need. And even in a cost-conscious market like India, people are willing to pay for these benefits:

“They want clarity, certainty, and curation. They don’t want to sift through hours of YouTube videos.”

 

Will Seekho and its language avatars succeed? Only time will tell. Regardless, it is certainly an interesting model.

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