Today, I have interview with Arpan Khosla who was the founder of Rhymly website. He was also a professional Hindi POMEDIAN (Poet + Comedian) & having 10 years of experience in this field. He has done 300+ live funny poetry shows in Delhi/NCR religion. One of interesting thing about Arpan, He’s also an Engineer and left his job a year back and become an entrepreneur. He has recently launched his search engine website Rhymly which helps building poems, shayars, lyricists, rappers etc. Rhymly is a free website which helps to find of all common Hindi words.
I have asked few questions from Arpan Khosla about his website Rhymly.
Please provide a brief overview of your Website?
Rhymly.com is a search engine website that helps budding poets, shayars, lyricists, rappers, theatre jingle writers, Youtube Artists, ad agencies etc. find rhymes of all common Hindi words. Just search for any Hindi word in Hinglish & you will get all its rhymes in Hinglish & Devanagari both.
This way a writer has to only concentrate on creativity & leave the Vocabulary part to us.
This saves him a lot of time & ensures that his art pieces are never left incomplete due to rhyme & vocab constraints.
Also, this personal Hindi Rhyming Dictionary is completely FREE.
What inspired you to build this Website?
I have been a poet & creative writer for almost 10 years now & the only thing I have learned is that less time & more creativity are the only two means of earning your bread in this field.
I used to write only once or twice a month before because of which I had a lot of incomplete poems due to the lack of vocabulary or the lack of next rhyming word & then would eventually leave that piece because of the lack of thought thereafter.
I used to feel that continuous writer’s block due to vocab is not hygienic for my poetry because I always had a belief that Creativity > Vocabulary
I could see a lot of fellow writers struggling with the same issue.
I came to a conclusion that if more people have to make a more sustainable career in creative writing, then they can’t be limited by both mood & vocab.
Also, there was no resource on Google to search for rhymes of a certain Hindi/Hindustani word & the market of Hindi writers is/was pretty large.
There were/are such resources for English but none for Hindi. I used to crib all the time because of this & used to waste a lot of time thinking of rhymes of words in my brain ( shona, kona, corona, etc. ).
I used to write a lot of funny parodies & jingles for my street theatre group in college but felt that this wasn’t the most efficient way of writing & I could see a lot of time wasted in this.
I didn’t have an entrepreneurial attitude then but poetry was still my unsaid venture.
I finally a gathered the right team having the same belief & decided to make something that wouldn’t just help me but all Hindi/Hindustani writers at large & address their biggest pain point: Vocabulary.
A poem or a song can a be without end rhymes also, but even those writers use a lot of internal rhymes if not end rhymes.
We thus, have created a micro-mini Google-type search engine website called www.rhymly.comthat helps all budding/passionate poets, shayars, lyricists, rappers, parody makers, theatre jingle writers, Youtube artists, creative content writers, etc. find rhymes of all common Hindi words. Just search for a Hindi word (eg. pyaar ) & you will get all the rhymes for it in Hinglish.
We launched the website on 24th December 2017 & the response has been great. A lot of college/corporate people & creative writers are using this. The website gets a lot of hits & unique searches every day. We have also been co-partnering & co-sponsoring big college & commercial events in Delhi. The word of mouth brand reach has been really good as a lot of bloggers/influencers have been writing about us all by themselves.
What was the most challenging part of your life to build this website?
I had been unemployed for a year & was a working on a different startup when this idea struck me. It was more of a now or never thing. The most challenging part was to make creative writers & non-writers understand how this utility can really help both of them at the same time. That apart from being a search engine, it’s also content technology platform where people can get discovered by masses for their innovative writing & eventually monetize.
How did you overcome those challenges?
I believe that the primary parameter of judging if we have overcome few of our challenges are users reviews. I go to a lot of poetry events & have received some really constructive & impactful feedback from our users like:
“My new poem has 33% of its content from Rhymly”,
“I used to only read Hindi poetry before but with this, I also have the inspiration to become a poet”,
“It’s a great initiative that can help people break their writer’s block which is such a profound roadblock “,
“I write slam poetry in English but always wanted to explore writing in Hindi but couldn’t due to poor Vocab. Now I can do that”
“I wrote my latest song in less than 3 hours with Rhymly”,
“I used to send a lot of forwarded SMS Shayari to friends before but now I make it all by myself”, etc.
Also, we give sentence prompts through our FB page every day so that people can write at least two lines each day. A lot of people get engaged through this & it keeps the thought process going. Also, I create funny memes around rhymly through our social media handles every day which has attracted a lot of non-writing public.
Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.
Ummm… I guess my habit of not finishing one thing & starting another. My mind is just way too much of a wanderer.
What are your plans for future?
We are working on a multi-platform app for Rhymly. We will be also putting Urdu words in our database.Also, along with the rhymes, writers would soon be able to see their meanings & usage of the word in both English & Hindi which will make it a one-stop shop platform & they don’t need to go any other platform for the same. Also, we are looking to do workshops & host open website poetry contests in colleges & schools ( just like open book tests of IIT’S ) where people would be given a topic on the spot & they have to write a poem using their personal online Hindi rhyming dictionary Rhymly.
Our end goal is a Machine Learning based software that will help people write better & quality pieces.
Share a quote that inspires you the most.
“MEDIOCRE WORK IS NOT WORSHIP”