World Plus has raised $1M in total. We talk with Ebe Khasag, its CEO.
PetaCrunch: How would you describe World Plus in a single tweet?
Ebe Khasag: World Plus is the first truly digital publishing platform in the world providing you with the most interactive magazine reading experience!
PC: How did it all start and why?
EK: It all stemmed from an idea that the magazines need to be revolutionized to match the digital growth in the world. The internet and the technological revolution are changing the role of media worldwide, completely. We used to listen to radio most of the time, but the young generations listen to podcasts. Not only that, the TV we watch is changing more into on-demand subscriptions and the print daily newspapers are mostly digital now. However, the magazine platform is not well digitized. Even though we have digital magazine platforms such as Zinio, Magzter, and Issuu, the magazines that are on there have the exact same contents as the printed ones do and what’s more, they are in PDF. It is harder to read on mobile screens or any other smart devices because the reader has to zoom the PDF.
Therefore, we wanted to create value in the digital magazine reading experience by offering a new kind of digital magazine platform that they’ve never seen. We created World Plus, which lets the reader scroll magazine articles and not zoom with many more other advantages for everyone – the publisher, the reader, and the advertisers.
PC: What have you achieved so far?
EK: So far, we established a solid team that is like a family who work tirelessly for the goals we set. World Plus, our product was created in span of a couple of years and had its soft launch in Singapore about a month ago.
World Plus offers something for everyone in the magazine industry – the publishers, the advertisers, and last but not least, the readers. The fully interactive World Plus is fulfilling the needs of the publishers and the advertisers to reach more readers/users cost efficiently and the readers to experience a more user friendly and accessible digital magazine platform. The current print magazine industry is not only declining as illustrated in this New York Times article, but also illustrate losing its readers rapidly as the Generation Z doesn’t read much print magazines. According to Bloomberg analysis of the UN data, using 2000/2001 as the generational split, Gen Z comprises 32 percent of the global population of 7.7 billion.
Everything is easier said than done, so we see the creation of World Plus and the launch as only the beginning of a long road of achievements for World Plus to create more value for everyone.
PC: How will you use your recent funding round?
EK: After our successful soft launch in Singapore, we decided that it is crucial to have soft launches around the world, specifically in Japan and in the US. Our recent funding round will be used for those events, marketing and on top of covering the costs of World Plus operation costs.
PC: What do you plan to achieve in the next 2-3 years?
EK: I believe that goals and dreams should be planned and executed with efficiency and not to be talked out as much. However, I will reveal 2 of our goals for the next year:
- To include the top 500 magazines in 10 languages on World Plus
- To reach 5 million users by mid 2020.
