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An enriching conversation with Priyanka Jain & Sudeepta Shanbhag with WICCI
On July 25, 2024, the WICCI Karnataka Yoga Council hosted a very insightful and earnest conversation featuring Priyanka Jain and Sudeepta Shanbhag from Eka Yoga & Meditation about their journey of making yoga more accessible through technology.
Priyanka is an IIT Bombay graduate with an MBA from Cambridge University, UK and has varied experience in analytics, business consulting, non-profits, and the yoga field. Sudeepta is a mentor at Eka Yoga who combines her expertise in biomechanical research with her passion for anatomy, physiology, and yoga and has been designing programs since 2015. Together, they have traversed the journey of building Eka Yoga & Meditation, a homegrown Indian platform that provides a wide variety of contents. They are adept at conducting live yoga classes, meditation practices and podcasts amalgamating different yoga traditions while staying true and authentic to the roots. With their hand-picked and experienced mentors, they help individuals from all over the world to inculcate yoga and meditation as a daily habit.
How it began..
Eka Yoga emerged when Priyanka recognized a gap in the yoga space for online yoga classes by Indian tutors. Priyanka's technical and business background, coupled with her interest in software, data, and scaling operations, inspired her to take this initiative and start Eka Yoga. The goal was to make yoga more accessible by making it online. While they have most of their content in English language, they have also created content in regional languages to cater to the Indian audience who feel comfortable and connected in their local language.
Eka Yoga offers online yoga classes, daily chanting sessions, pranayama and meditation practices, all at affordable prices and flexible schedules. They also work in collaboration with the Samiksha Foundation which is a creative learning initiative for children with cancer and focus on the emotional well-being of the children, providing them with a space to relax and be themselves. They also collaborate with mental health experts, sound and art therapists to enhance their offerings and tackle contemporary health issues.
Eka Yoga uses their own app and platforms like YouTube and Spotify to offer their content. Furthermore, they have a radio podcast called Eka Radio to bring authentic conversations with accomplished teachers to help further yoga education.
How it is going..
The response to Eka Yoga has been overwhelmingly positive. They have users who consistently engage with the app and its contents. People have found it useful in combating anxiety, panic attacks, and sleep related problems. Receiving feedback from their users on how Eka Yoga is a game changer works as a great motivating tool for Priyanka and Sudeepta.
Challenges they faced..
Initially, Eka Yoga was a forerunner. However, during COVID-19, apps like Calm and Headspace entered the Indian market, offering free content. For Eka, it seemed impossible to match. Having to pay salaries to a team of 15-16 members while maintaining quality of the content and paying rent for their physical studio/office space appeared very intimidating.
But, with the covid situation in mind, they swallowed the bitter pill and let go of their studio, and made their app content free for usage, even though this was not at all economical for them.
This was not the only hard decision they had to take in their journey. They faced multiple challenges such as establishing a social media presence which felt particularly hard due to their camera shy nature, adapting to everyday new technologies and balancing both work and their personal life. Both Priyanka and Sudeepta had a hard time learning to set up the tech appliances, recording high quality videos, finding sustainable user engagement models, managing continuous app updates and networking on top of that. As business women in the yoga and tech space, they also have to keep updating themselves and the app with new research that goes around yoga and wellness.
What did we learn..
The conversation offered valuable insights into what effective pricing looks like in India, the effort that goes into building a yoga app and sustaining it. They believe that in modern times, an app is not necessary for content delivery as they themselves are now keen to grow their youtube channel. In addition to that, they also talked about the difference between app-based and YouTube content delivery. YouTube aids in discovery, exposure whereas an app allows for detailed
analysis, personalized experiences, and better interaction.
This event highlighted the intersection of technology and traditional yoga and provided an insight into the journey of making yoga more accessible through online platforms with a step by step detailed process and challenges that one may face. Their journey helps in educating and encourages more women to set their foot in the entrepreneurial space. This conversation provided a very candid peek into their journey of setting up Eka Yoga.
To know more please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Noqy57toR4
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