As a content specialist, I have often wondered how does one truly quantify content? Skilled writers are hired for their ability to string together the appropriate words and sentences, tell a story with aplomb and nuance, and hope that the words transport a reader to another realm. But how can this align with an organisation's ethos or accurately represent a person? Can content be analysed further to evoke the right kind of emotions? 

Sharmin Ali has figured out how. After completing her undergraduate studies in engineering, Ali joined a consulting company where she got the opportunity to work with Fortune 500 companies in the USA. Her experience revealed that even large corporations struggle with communicating with empathy and building human connections. "This realization made me start Instoried where we help large companies make their marketing and communications content more human with a data-driven, scalable and repeatable approach using AI, leading to an increased RoI." 

(Sharmin Ali, Founder, Instoried)

Instoried is a deep-tech platform that analyses and optimises the emotional quotient, tonality and relevance of written content across multiple formats of blogs, articles, social media posts. The company uses a data-driven approach using their proprietary AI driven technology to make real time analysis and suggestions to enhance written content to increase engagement and interest for the reader. "Our platform helps content writers, in the SME category, e-commerce, FMCG, and other verticals to optimize emotions in their marketing content," explains Ali. 

As one creates content, the tool dynamically analyses it using AI and displays the tone and emotion of the text used. When you click on a particular tone or emotion, the tool highlights all the words in your content exuding that particular tone or emotion. Upon hovering the cursor over a particular word, it gives you multiple recommendations that are both semantically and contextually relevant, thereby enhancing the empathy of your content. NLP is used to analyse the semantics of content and identify the tone, emotion and impact of the written content. With the help of Instoried, clients have increased engagement of their blogs and marketing communication by optimizing their content’s emotion, tonality and use of impactful text. Content creators can consistently engage with the audience. The company's web apps and APIs make for easy integration into any platform.

Ali says it took the team nearly 18 months almost to build the proprietary tech, and the team hasn't used any open-source APIs yet. Instead, nearly 7 million unique, inhouse data points have been used to build this proprietary platform, with the entire code stack having been built in-house. The Instoried App can be used to gauge and improve the tone and emotion of any type of content, be it a five-word tweet or a 5000-word manuscript, says Ali. The tool gives real time analysis of the content along with recommendations to help a user tweak and improve content on the go. Instoried is being extensively used by customers to improve their email campaigns, blogs, social media reach and digital ad copies. There are diverse use-cases that range from creating engaging captions for social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, collaborating within the content team and focus groups to increasing email open rate, checking the originality of content through the plagiarism checker, analysing the mood of your customer while they are chatting with the customer support, among others. 

Instoried was set to launch in 2020 after spending 18 months building proprietary datasets, but the pandemic altered their plans, and Ali believes this turned out to be an advantage. The lockdown enhanced the importance of selling online, and the need for a strong online engagement model was the need of the hour for several businesses in the early days of the pandemic. "Today, an online customer contributes to the sales and profits much more than a customer visiting the store physically.

With people now almost used to the new normal, the digital boom is here to stay as I see good growth opportunities. We have grown 5X during the lockdown in the year 2020. With social distancing here to stay and work-from-home already a lifestyle, the future of content creators across platforms is definitely bright in this new normal. With India expected to have over 760 million smartphone users in 2021, demand for local and relevant content is only going to grow in 2021," adds Ali. 

Recently, Instoried launched its Content Emotional Intelligence Tool for individual content creators to curate content pieces. So far, Instoried has about 30 clients in FMCG, Ecommerce and several SMEs. Plans for 2021 include the launch of a keyboard for both Android and IOS devices that can be used by any platform. "We are going to completely disrupt the compliances industry with the correct measures in place for both social and digital. This is the future of chatting with endless possibilities," says Ali. 

Instoried raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Rockstud Capital in March 2021. Other investors include SOSV, Artesian Investments, Mumbai Angels, 9Unicorns, Venture Catalysts, Jain Angel Network, London-based JPIN, and a US-based VC, who have invested nearly $1.5 million so far.