The Ken sells business news the way most of Indian media insists cannot work: no advertising, no sponsored posts, no free articles, and exactly one story a day. At launch in October 2016 a year’s subscription cost more than three of India’s leading business newspapers combined, as documented by the Reuters Institute — and readers paid anyway, past 30,000 of them by September 2021.
Here is the contradiction the rest of this piece pays off. The same discipline that made The Ken cash-flow positive by April 2018 has not translated into steady accounting profit at scale: its operating company, Kenrise Media Private Limited, reported revenue of about ₹9.8 crore in FY25, down 8.1% from FY24, with a net loss near ₹2.9 crore. A subscription-only newsroom is a genuinely different animal from an ad-funded one — it is more honest with readers, and much harder to grow fast. This is how The Ken built it, what it cost, and where the model strains.
Quick facts
| Company | The Ken (operated by Kenrise Media Private Limited) |
| Founded | Incorporated 4 August 2016; publicly launched 3 October 2016, Bengaluru |
| Founders | Rohin Dharmakumar, Seema Singh, Sumanth Raghavendra, Ashish K Mishra |
| Businesses | Subscription business journalism (India + Southeast Asia editions), sector newsletters (The Stack), podcasts |
| Latest FY revenue | ~₹9.8 crore (FY25), down 8.1% from ~₹10.7 crore (FY24) — per Inc42, from MCA filings |
| Latest FY profit/loss | Net loss ~₹2.9 crore (FY25); net loss ~₹2.94 crore (FY24) |
| Listed | Private |
| Last valuation | Not publicly disclosed; total raised ~$4.13 million across 4 rounds (Inc42) |
| CEO / key shareholders | Rohin Dharmakumar (CEO); backers include Omidyar Network, Rainmatter Capital, Baskar Subramanian, Vijay Shekhar Sharma |
What The Ken does
The Ken is a subscriber-only digital newsroom that publishes long-form, analytical business journalism for professionals — founders, operators, investors and executives — across technology, startups, finance, healthcare and science. It carries no display advertising and no sponsored content; the reader is the customer, not the product. The core India edition publishes one deeply reported story on a working day, and a parallel Southeast Asia edition serves Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
- Format: one original, reported story per working day rather than a high-volume news feed (Reuters Institute, September 2021).
- Editions: India (from 2016) and Southeast Asia (launched February 2020, with full-time writers in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand).
- Adjacent products: The Stack, sector newsletter bundles (climate technology, fintech, personal finance and others); and podcasts including First Principles, Cost to Company and Daybreak (launched late 2022).
- Revenue model: 100% subscription, individual and corporate — no advertising or sponsorship (Reuters Institute, September 2021).
The origin: journalists betting against advertising
The Ken was built by people who had watched the ad-funded model corrode the newsrooms they came from. Rohin Dharmakumar had been an editor at Forbes India, covering telecom, media and entertainment, after a stint that included Mint; he holds an MBA from IIM Calcutta. Seema Singh, the founding editor, was a veteran science and business journalist, also formerly at Forbes India. Ashish K Mishra came from the same Forbes India stable, and Sumanth Raghavendra brought startup-operator experience from media and technology ventures.
Their founding insight was blunt: if advertisers pay the bills, they — not readers — are the real audience, and coverage bends accordingly. So The Ken inverted the deal. It would charge readers directly, refuse ads entirely, and publish less rather than more, on the theory that a professional would pay for one story worth reading over twenty that were not. When it launched on 3 October 2016, a year’s subscription reportedly cost more than three leading Indian business newspapers put together (Reuters Institute) — a deliberate signal that this was a premium product, not a commodity feed. The bet was that a slice of India’s millions of white-collar professionals would rather pay for signal than wade through free noise.
The struggle years: a co-founder split and a lawsuit
A subscription-only newsroom has no cushion. There is no advertising line to paper over a bad quarter, and every rupee of revenue has to be earned reader by reader. Two episodes tested the company.
The first was internal. In 2019, co-founder Ashish Mishra left and went on to launch The Morning Context, a directly competing subscription publication. The Ken subsequently took the dispute to court, alleging misuse of confidential information; the litigation ran on until The Ken withdrew its suit on 24 May 2022. For a small company, a founder departure that spawns a rival and years of legal overhead is a material drain on attention and cash.
The second was structural and continuing: growth in a subscription model is slow by design. The Ken deliberately avoided the paid-marketing, discount-heavy playbook that inflates subscriber counts, choosing instead to grow largely by word of mouth and to optimise for long-term retention over quick conversions. That protects quality and unit economics, but it caps how fast the top line can move — a constraint visible in the recent revenue numbers, where FY25 income actually fell year on year.
The turning point: cash-flow positive on subscriptions alone
The single event that validated the whole thesis came early. By April 2018 — less than two years after launch — The Ken had turned cash-flow positive on subscription revenue alone, as reported by TechCrunch at the time of its Series A. On each side of that line the numbers tell the story: in the run-up, the company’s most recent quarterly revenue had roughly doubled over the previous quarter and tripled year on year, and more than half of its original $400,000 seed round was still sitting in the bank.
That combination — growing fast, spending little, and already covering its cash costs from readers — is what let The Ken raise on its own terms rather than out of desperation, and it is why the ad-free model is cited as a template by other subscription publishers. The catch, which the later filings expose, is that cash-flow positive at a small scale is not the same as durable accounting profit once you add editions, products and a bigger team.
The money behind it
The Ken has raised roughly $4.13 million across four rounds — modest by startup standards, and deliberately so for a company that wants to stay reader-funded. The named backers matter as much as the amounts.
- Seed (pre-2018): about $400,000. Angel backers included Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the Paytm founder, alongside participants connected to Omidyar Network (Wikipedia; TechCrunch, July 2018).
- Series A (July 2018): $1.5 million, led by Omidyar Network, with participation from Yuj Kutumb — the family foundation of Sid Yog of the Xander Group — plus existing and new angels (TechCrunch, July 2018).
- Series B (August 2023): ₹16 crore ($2 million), from two new investors: Rainmatter Capital, the investment arm of brokerage Zerodha, and Baskar Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of media-tech firm Amagi. The company described it as a mixed round of primary and secondary investment (Wikipedia; The Ken, August 2023).
What each changed: Omidyar Network’s early conviction gave the ad-free model institutional credibility when few believed Indian readers would pay; Rainmatter’s involvement signalled patient, mission-aligned capital rather than growth-at-all-costs money; and Baskar Subramanian’s cheque brought an operator who has scaled a media-technology business globally. No post-money valuation has been publicly disclosed for any round; on the equity split, a Tracxn snapshot dated July 2023 put founders at 30.4%, institutional funds at 21.8%, angels at 18.3%, an ESOP pool at 8.9%, and enterprises at 9.5%.
How The Ken makes money
The model is unusually simple to describe and unusually hard to run. Money comes in from subscriptions; there is no second revenue engine subsidising the journalism.
- Individual subscriptions: annual and multi-year plans are the core. At the July 2018 Series A, India pricing was reported at ₹2,750 (about $43) a year, with overseas pricing near $108; single-story purchases were offered at $20 to serve non-subscribers without cannibalising the annual plan (TechCrunch; Reuters Institute).
- Corporate / team subscriptions: sold on a transparent, self-serve basis to companies; more than 150 organisations across India and globally had signed up by September 2021 (Reuters Institute).
- Newsletters and podcasts: The Stack bundles and the podcast slate extend the subscription into adjacent formats rather than opening a separate ad-funded stream.
Where the margin sits — and the part people get wrong. Subscription media has almost no marginal cost per additional reader, so gross economics look excellent; the hard costs are editorial salaries (The Ken pays market-rate journalist salaries by design) and the technology to run paywalls, apps and billing. The number that actually governs the business is not new sign-ups but retention. The Ken has reported that roughly 98% of its subscriber base sits on one- or three-year plans (Reuters Institute, September 2021) — extraordinary loyalty that turns each renewal into near-recurring revenue, but also means growth depends on constantly finding fresh readers rather than churning ones back in.
The numbers
Figures below are for the operating entity, Kenrise Media Private Limited, as compiled by Inc42 from Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings. Units are ₹ crore.
| Fiscal year | Revenue (₹ crore) | Net profit / (loss) (₹ crore) |
| FY23 | ~10.0 (implied by reported ~7.2% FY24 growth) | Not disclosed in sources reviewed |
| FY24 | ~10.7 | (2.94) |
| FY25 | ~9.8 (down 8.1% YoY) | (2.9) |
- FY25 total expenses: about ₹12.7 crore against ~₹9.8 crore revenue, i.e. costs ran roughly 30% above income (Inc42).
- FY25 EBITDA: about −₹2.7 crore; net profit margin about −29.4% (Inc42).
- The FY25 revenue decline of 8.1% is the headline strain: after years of growth, the top line contracted, which for a subscription business points to net subscriber or pricing pressure rather than a one-off.
- Headcount: about 101 employees as of 2026 (Inc42).
The through-line: The Ken is a small, disciplined company whose costs have recently outrun a top line that stopped growing — profitable in cash terms at points in its history, but currently loss-making on an accrual basis as it invests in editions and products.
Where the money comes from
Because there is no advertising, the revenue mix is a story about who is paying and where they sit.
- By customer type: two streams — individual subscribers (the large majority by count) and corporate/team subscriptions (fewer accounts, higher value each). More than 30,000 individuals and 150+ organisations were subscribing as of September 2021 (Reuters Institute).
- By geography: the India edition plus a Southeast Asia edition (from February 2020) staffed by writers in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand — a rare case of an Indian newsroom selling paid subscriptions across borders.
- By format: the daily flagship story, sector newsletters (The Stack) and podcasts, all sitting inside the same paid relationship rather than as separate monetisation.
The surprise is how concentrated the loyalty is: with roughly 98% of subscribers on annual or three-year commitments, The Ken’s revenue base is far stickier than a typical monthly-churn media product — the flip side being that a single year of weak new-subscriber addition (as the FY25 revenue dip suggests) flows straight through to the top line, because there is no ad revenue to cushion it.
The risks
- Growth ceiling of the paywall-only model. Refusing advertising and heavy paid marketing protects independence but caps reach. The FY25 revenue fall of 8.1% to ~₹9.8 crore shows the mechanism: when new-subscriber addition slows, there is no second revenue line to compensate, so income can shrink even with high retention.
- Cost base outrunning revenue. FY25 expenses of ~₹12.7 crore against ~₹9.8 crore revenue produced a net loss near ₹2.9 crore. Quality journalism at market salaries, plus two editions and multiple products, is expensive; if the top line stays flat, the company must either cut cost or find growth to close the gap.
- Competition and talent flight. The 2019 departure of co-founder Ashish Mishra to launch The Morning Context — and the litigation that followed until The Ken withdrew its suit in May 2022 — shows how a small, talent-dependent newsroom is exposed to both direct rivals and the loss of key people, in a niche where a handful of paid-journalism players compete for the same professional readers.
The takeaway
The transferable lesson from The Ken is about the trade-off hidden inside a clean business model. Charging readers directly and refusing advertising buys you independence, trust and remarkable loyalty — roughly 98% of subscribers renewing on long-term plans is a number most consumer businesses would envy. But the same choice removes every shortcut to scale: no ad revenue to smooth a soft year, no discount-driven sign-up surge, no way to grow faster than readers are willing to pay. The FY25 numbers are the bill for that purity — a company that proved readers will pay for signal, now working out how to make that pay at a size that comfortably covers its costs. For any founder tempted by a subscription model, The Ken is the honest case study: the model works, the values hold, and the growth is slow — you have to want all three.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns and runs The Ken?
The Ken is operated by Kenrise Media Private Limited, a private company incorporated in Bengaluru on 4 August 2016. It was co-founded by Rohin Dharmakumar (CEO), Seema Singh, Sumanth Raghavendra and Ashish K Mishra. As of a July 2023 snapshot, founders held about 30.4% of the equity, with the rest split between institutional funds, angels, an ESOP pool and enterprises.
How does The Ken make money if it has no ads?
Entirely through subscriptions. It sells individual annual and multi-year plans plus corporate/team subscriptions, and extends the same paid relationship into newsletters (The Stack) and podcasts. There is no display advertising or sponsored content, so the reader, not an advertiser, is the customer.
How many subscribers does The Ken have?
As of September 2021, the Reuters Institute reported more than 30,000 individual subscribers and over 150 corporate subscriptions across India and abroad, with roughly 98% of subscribers on one- or three-year plans. The company does not routinely publish updated subscriber counts.
How much money has The Ken raised?
About $4.13 million across four rounds: a ~$400,000 seed (backers included Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Omidyar Network angels), a $1.5 million Series A led by Omidyar Network in July 2018, and a ₹16 crore ($2 million) Series B in August 2023 from Rainmatter Capital and Amagi co-founder Baskar Subramanian. No valuation has been publicly disclosed.
Is The Ken profitable?
It reported being cash-flow positive on subscription revenue by April 2018, but on an accrual basis the operating company posted losses recently: a net loss of about ₹2.94 crore in FY24 and about ₹2.9 crore in FY25, when revenue slipped 8.1% to roughly ₹9.8 crore (per Inc42, from MCA filings).
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Wikipedia, “The Ken” — company profile, founders, funding, Southeast Asia edition, The Morning Context litigation (accessed September 2026).
- Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism — “How an Asian business site attracted 30,000 subscribers by publishing one story a day” (September 2021): subscriber counts, retention, pricing, business model.
- TechCrunch — “The Ken raises $1.5M to grow its subscription journalism business in India” (July 2018): Series A, seed size, cash-flow-positive status, pricing, team size.
- Inc42 — The Ken company and financials pages (accessed September 2026): FY24 and FY25 revenue, expenses, net loss, EBITDA, margin, total funding, headcount.
- Tracxn — Kenrise Media Private Limited legal-entity profile (accessed September 2026): incorporation details, shareholding snapshot (July 2023).
- The Ken — “The Ken closes $2M Series B funding” (August 2023): Series B investors and structure.
- Trading Economics — USD/INR reference rate (September 2026).
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