Read and listen what you want

Namlik group categorize website news, articles and printed publications for you to listen.You can listen to your favorite podcasts by Namlik.me app and website. Namlik speaker team reads the content and after receiving consent, publishs them in the form of podcasts.

Reza Rezaii, Ali Gholami, Mohammad Hassan Farazmand and Hamid Habibollah are Namlik founders. Hamid Habibollah gives us more information:

• Why have Namlik decided to convert text files to voice?

We saw that much time is spent in car traffic and we can read contents with these voice files during these times.

• How did you make sure that people would welcome your idea due to the fact that reading per capita in Iran is low?

We just wanted to provide our service to our specific audience who love reading. We asked them to complete our surveys and distribute them in public places as well. People between 22 to 35 years old welcomed our idea.

• Do you think survey in virtual spaces are more efficient or in real spaces?

We did this survey through email and virtual spaces too but the information received via traditional way was more useful.

• In your app and website, there is an icon named “listen later”. Does it mean that you provide offline service?

Yes, because of limitations in user access to internet and for allowing user account management, we provide online download feature and listening to it offline.

• What is another competitive service?

Besides offline voice file, there is a possibility to recognize tastes and examining users’ favorite topics.

• In Namlik media section, text file podcasts of different media and hosting text files are also covered.

Yes, in addition to producing podcast for different media, we host their podcasts too.

• Isn’t it a risk for media, publishers and authors to attract users’ attention only in listening to (not watching) voice files?

This is actually one of their concerns. We should pay a percent of sale amount to them. So we just convert a part of contents to voice files.

• Do Namlik speakers produce voice files?

We work with a group of speakers of News College. We give them topic and text and test voice, then we choose most suitable ones. Then we make a contract and they would do the rest of the work.

• Do you work with team members in the form of promotional stock (esop) ?

Yes, so far we didn’t pay to team members and all of our fiends make money after reaching to project.

• How do you make sure of copyright laws for your productions?

There isn’t 100% certainty in this regard. But we track any violations and warn the ones who violate the laws.

• So in spite of the fact that Namlik has 5200 monthly users and have started its business a year ago, it seems that it hasn’t made any money!

Yes, in the future we need to make production contracts and cash payments. Also Namlik will make money from services it provides to uses.

• If you could go back to the past, did you want to make a change in Namlik revenue process?

If I could, I would define a system which reduces the time interval of this process.

• To what extent do accelerators guaranty the success of a startup?

I think that supporter of this ecosystem should support new startups rather than startups which use accelerators. Although accelerators helps in teaching technical and legal issues, knowing market and team making as well as providing capital, but we should not think that startups can’t succeed without an accelerator.

We should show that it’s better for founders to look for customers independently after production rather than looking for investors.