Ankur and Dhruv’s Splitsub brings the dawn of streaming subscription sharing

Gone is the era of digital cable connections and radio broadcasts. Everything that you want to watch or listen to, is available through your smart devices. However, while the quality of the entertainment has significantly gone up, so have the costs and expenses on them.

There are one too many options available in the market. Choosing one of them and then bearing the cost of the subscription single-handedly can cost the richest out there a fortune. It is about time that, like cab pooling, that is no longer possible due to the pandemic, we also get to pool these streaming websites and applications.

Splitsub, a fintech startup, is solely dedicated to helping you split the subscription costs with your friends and family. Splitsub was launched by Ankur Solanki and Dhruv Goel back in August 2020. The firm is based out of Delaware, of the USA, and Gurugram, India.

Splitsub brings you almost all the popular streaming services on a single platform like Netflix, Prime Videos, Microsoft Teams, Grammarly, and Hotstar, amongst others.

Both the founders of the company were living in Barcelona after graduating with an MBA from ESADE Business School when the eureka moment finally arrived for Dhruv. In a sudden awakening, he realized that the streaming services are already being shared between friends and families, considering that subscription charges can cost anywhere from Rs 300 per year to Rs 1000 per month and even more.

Social media platforms and messaging apps are fertile breeding ground for fraudulent investment “opportunities” involving cryptocurrency or foreign currency trading (forex). They often begin with an unsolicited pitch or an invitation to join an unfamiliar trading website.

When it comes to cryptocurrency and its promise of passive income based on recruiting and investment in a digital “product” as part of an MLM, the offering was almost destined to draw in business owners with fraudulent motives. As the cryptocurrency and forex markets exploded in the last decade (at one point Forbes suggested there were almost 23,000 cryptocurrencies), the nature of the digital currency itself makes it a prime target for a Ponzi scheme.

Investing in a digital product with a short-term rate of remarkably high returns with representatives that may have little to no education in finance or banking soliciting new investors are all signs of “bad apples.” Thompson said in a recent post, “It’s time to state the obvious: Crypto + MLM = Legally Impossible.”

It’s a sentiment shared by many in the industry. As a general rule, cryptocurrency and other digital financial product companies are not legitimate network marketing opportunities. Thousands of cryptocurrencies have failed—whether because they were a scam from the beginning or because of poor management.

One of the biggest scams was OneCoin, which, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, generated over four billion Euros in sales revenue between fourth quarter 2014 and fourth quarter 2016 operating as an MLM through which members received commissions for recruiting others to purchase cryptocurrency packages.

In reality, there was no mining of coins. Founder Karl Greenwood, a citizen of Sweden and the United Kingdom, was finally arrested in July 2018; extradited to the US; and pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud; one count of wire fraud; and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. His business partner Ruja Ignatova has been missing since 2017 and remains on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted List.

He realized that not only is there an awkwardness when it comes down to asking people to cough out money, but there is severe free-loading. This came from a personal experience where Dhruv’s sister ended up sharing his password with all her friends. He knew that sharing is already happening. But, there needs to be a more organized system, and hence came out Splitsub.

Dhruv mentions, “We have created a group sharing platform where users can decide with whom they want to share which subscriptions. At the same time, they can discover new online subscription groups that they can join to avail of digital services,”

He also adds,” The startup does not manage, create, or sell groups; we only handle payments and make sure that users are not cheated by illegitimate group owners on the Splitsub platform.”

The company saw 10,000 signups in the first two months of launching its beta version of the platform. Spiltsub is currently targeting tier-1 and tier-2 cities with viewers in the age range of 18 to 40 years.