A Media Platform that is from people to people!

Josh Talks is one of the media platforms that has grown incredibly and gained wide acceptance all over India. It received the National Media Award in 2019 and was recognized as one of the best startups in India for the year 2017.

What makes Josh Talks unique, is the way they present their idea. They present them as a story-telling way, to attract people, motivate them, and give them hope.

The idea of this media platform is to inspire people through narrating stories. The people of Josh Talks believe that the best way to re-shape people’s lives, motivate them to assign higher targets, and improve the quality of their lives by developing more positive attitudes.

All this is possible and is achievable by Josh Talks as it has touched thousands of souls across India. What helps this media platform to be well-recognized and preferred among people, is the fact that it talks to people using their regional languages. Josh Talks serves in several languages: English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi, and Telugu.

The Establishment of Josh Talks.

Although the official birth of Josh Talks was in 2015, it began and started as simple conferences in 2014 in Delhi and Bengaluru. A year later, the big move was accomplished, and Josh Talks was founded by Shobhit Banga & Supriya Paul. Josh Talks is funded by famous Indian investors such as Ritesh Malik, and Sumit Ranka.

The aim of Josh Talks, as per its founders, is to raise the aspirations of young India, and we can confidently say that Josh Talks is on its right track. It covers several and a wide range of subjects, and it reaches a huge audience. Above all, it brings out stories from small unknown villages in India and makes them well-known. It spreads stories from different parts of India and spread awareness towards national concern issues as well.

Its speakers are from different fields, such as social activists, business leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, academics, administrators, sportspeople, authors, musicians, public figures, actors and artists.

Josh Talks has offices in India and Bangladesh with its headquarter being based in Gurgaon city, India.

Currently, Josh Talks focuses and covers cities tier 2&3 in India. In August 2017, Josh Talks started monthly conferences in different tier 2 cities across India.

Awards, Recognitions & Noticeable Events.

In 2016, Josh Talks took place at Thyagaraj Stadium, New Delhi, and it was named Josh Talks 2016: Leap. This event witnessed around 5,000 attendees, and it had 24 speakers who spoke about issues and concerns from different fields.

In 2018, Josh Talks participated in Make Your Mark campaign, and during this campaign, 14 stories were launched to create awareness and connections amongst the first-time voters. “It is important to realize the importance of exercising our vote and the power and responsibility that comes upon each citizen, as being a part of a democracy.” Supriya Paul, a co-founder of Josh Talks has expressed her thoughts about their campaign. This campaign encourages the citizens from rural and urban places to vote for the first time, and feel their role in their country, for the 2019 elections.

As a result, to their contribution, Josh Talk was awarded the National Media Award by President of India Ramnath Kovind on 25th January 2019.

In 2017, Josh Talks was named in a list of Top 50 startups of India by Economic Times, and SturaHR.

It is not surprising that a young company like Josh Talks to have innovative highly inspiring founders like Supriya Paul. Like her company, she has received awards and recognitions as well. For example, has received many honorable awards such as Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, Most Influential Youth Marketing Leader’18, SheThePeople Digital Women Award’17, WEF’17 Award- “Iconic Women Creating a Better World for All” and She also gets The Young Entrepreneur/businesswoman of Year Women in Business Award’17 in the world.

The Creative Mind Behind Josh Talks

At a very young age and during her college time, Supriya started the company “Josh Talks”. What inspired her to start such a company, was coming across many young people at college who were from far away-rural areas, in which they never left before college. These people were never exposed to other places, different people and culture, and other thoughts, events or idea from India, and outside.

Therefore, she decided to start a new way to inspire people, and change many stereotypes to encourage people, especially young people, to achieve their dreams.

For the first year and a half, Supriya and Shobhit did many live events, conferences, and talks that were all in English.  Then, Supriya recognized that they have reached the educated, well-exposed segment people, not the actual segment that drove her to start Josh Talks. Therefore, by the end of 2016, she decided to start Josh Talks in Hindi.

This new approach and way of sharing stories show a significant success. After this, a further step was taken to reach more audience, which was translating the same talk into different languages that match its region.

A surprise turns over was that the translated talks into the regional languages did not gain the acceptance Supriya was expecting to receive. So, she decided to have a different approach. This time, this approach was more scientific. What they did was to be physically on the areas they want to help, and spread new thoughts in. They conducted studies, and surveys, and accordingly new topics came out. So, how Josh Talks work now is as follow, Josh Talks should not only match the regional language only, but also the regional concerns, problems, issues, and favorite topics.

The results of their research come out with various and diverse topics. Each region acted as if it were a different country with its own culture. For example, some areas have drug abuse problems their main concern, while in other areas Bollywood issues are their hot topics, and in other areas, women rights or poverty are their main concerns and go on.

How Supriya manages to market for its company is another success story of hers. At Josh Talks there are two communities, online and offline community. The online community is where all the talks are created in different languages and distribute them. The offline community was the difficult part for them to reach, due to many reasons mainly is that none of Josh Talks employees and founders are from these areas. She uses different ways to reach their offline community such as local partnerships & regional media and the “word of mouth” approach. In this approach, Josh Talks promotes itself through having.

representatives in regional colleges from students or teachers who will share videos with students about Josh Talks. Another way is the “cross-community connection” approach in which several mediums promote for Josh Talks at the same time. For example, the Josh Talks representative at the local college who presents a video about Josh Talk, his college Facebook page will promote the same at the same time, as well as the local Newspaper talks about it.

In this way, Supriya and Josh Talks team managed to spread their company among almost everywhere in India, even the most remote places.

Josh Talks touches souls every day, by understanding what young people need, dream of, or want. Simply, tell a story to inspire, encourage and eventually change lives to enjoy a better life.

Supriya Paul Ted Talks