How Content Whale Restructured Its Way to $783K a Year

Who built it, and what they built

Vaibhav Kishnani is the founder and CEO of Content Whale, a Mumbai-based content writing company built around the motto of making every company a content-accelerated company. The agency produces textual and visual content for SMBs, enterprises, and startups across industries including education technology, healthcare, information technology, human resources, finance, and lifestyle.

The company offers more than 30 content writing services, with SEO articles and blogs as its flagship offering. Vaibhav positions SEO content as the answer to rising pay-per-click costs, since companies priced out of Google Ads are turning to organic search for leads.

This is a follow-up to an earlier Starter Story feature. In the original story, Vaibhav shared that he launched the business with $35 and grew it into a $514k business over five years.

How they grew

Content Whale recorded over $783K in revenue this year while serving 3000+ brands and delivering 50k+ content pieces, and the team is projecting about $1.5 million for the coming year. Vaibhav admits growth fell short of expectations, describing 2023 as a year of grinding out steady progress rather than hitting big wins.

The turnaround rested on three fixes. First, the company restructured around numbers-based KPIs for every department and individual, with a strict policy that each person stick to their designated role. Second, it acquired Write Right, an academic content writing company owned by Bhavik Sakhedi, to enter the B2C market and lift web traffic; Bhavik then joined as SEO head. Third, it scrapped monthly sales targets in favor of quarterly ones.