Not Every Short Video Is Competing With TikTok

01 /The Concept

Seekho calls itself "India's number one edutainment app."

"Edutainment" – a blend of education and entertainment – describes content that either delivers learning in an engaging format or wraps entertainment in an educational frame.

For Seekho, that means a catalog of over 10,000 short videos, each two to five minutes long, teaching practical skills. Top-performing content includes "How to make a Reel with a million views," "How to start investing in the stock market," and "How to learn English."

The videos are produced by outside creators whom Seekho calls "gurus" – success gurus, business gurus, YouTube gurus, and so on. The platform pitches these creators on the chance to reach a larger audience and "inspire millions of people."

Free users can watch a limited number of videos in standard quality with ads. Full catalog access, higher quality, and an ad-free experience require a subscription starting at roughly $1.75 per month.

Seekho likely shares some subscription revenue with its creators, though the amounts are probably modest. The real draw for gurus is audience building and the opportunity to convert platform viewers into paying customers for their higher-ticket personal offerings.

According to the site, Seekho has 2 million learners. A piece from last year put paid subscribers at around 100,000 as of July of that year.

Seekho has now raised $8M in a new funding round, following a $3M raise in March of the previous year.

02 /Why It Matters

Seekho addresses the obvious "how are you different from other education apps?" question directly on its website: "We focus on short learning videos that make education fast and accessible. This unique approach sets us apart from other educational platforms."

Interestingly, a startup-minded observer wouldn't ask how Seekho differs from other education apps. They'd ask how it differs from TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts.

This is a common founder bias: treating anything structurally similar as a competitor. But users don't think in architectural terms – they think in terms of what the product is for. From an engineer's perspective, Seekho competes with TikTok. From a user's perspective, it competes with other educational services. Because TikTok is about entertainment, and Seekho is about learning.

This distinction is exactly what French startup Revyze ([related review](/review/obuchenie-v-stile-tiktoka)) has leveraged. Revyze built an app to help high school students prepare for college entrance exams. During exam season, Revyze climbs to the top of the App Store – beating TikTok, even though TikTok also has videos on the same topics. In France, Revyze has come to be called "the TikTok of education." That positioning helped it raise €5.5M in new funding on top of €2M raised before launch.

Femble ([related review](/review/najdjotsja-ne-vsjo-tolko-dostovernoe)) and Roon (previously covered, $22.5M raised total) made the same conceptual move in health content – short-video platforms where only credentialed, practicing physicians can post. In the user's mental model, these services sit alongside other health platforms, not alongside TikTok. Same reframe as Seekho and Revyze.

Another detail worth noting: Seekho's target market is Indian cities at the "tier two and below" level – not the major metros where a more digitally sophisticated population tends to cluster.

This is a reminder that in many countries, the audience in large cities and the rest of the country can be meaningfully different in ways that create real strategic options – distinct needs, price sensitivities, and content preferences that a tailored product can serve better than a one-size-fits-all approach.

03 /Opportunities

The broader lesson: stop treating things that are structurally similar but serve different purposes as competitors. From an engineering standpoint, a meat grinder and a blender might seem interchangeable – but for a consumer, they're completely different products.

This opens up a world of opportunities for transplanting formats from one context to another. Short video is an obvious candidate.

Travel marketplaces built around short-video feeds already exist – Unravel ([related review](/review/ljudi-stali-vybirat-glazami)) and Travly (previously covered) both went there. So did Atmosfy ([related review](/review/giganty-pokazali-nam-sposob-zarabotat)), with short clips covering restaurants, clubs, museums, and places to spend time. TikTok has plenty of that content too – but Atmosfy isn't competing with TikTok in users' minds.

Where else can the short-video format be dropped in – in a way that puts the product in a specialized category rather than in a head-to-head with TikTok?