Is The Ken Subscription Worth It?

A lot of people mailed me that they loved my honest review of Moneycontrol-Pro. I got a lot of mails to write a review on The Ken. Without further adieu here is my honest unbiased opinion on The Ken Subscription. I hope my review will help you to make a decision.

My journey with The Ken began on 21st Nov 2019 when I heard about it while scrolling through Quora. I visited the website, liked its clean design and immediately registered to its newsletter. The very first email that I received was an article they published on Ashoka University(See Image). I was mesmerised by the beautiful write-up and a unique story. How many Indians Newspapers do you find write such unique content? 3 days later, I finally paid Rs 3245 for The Ken Subscription(India version).

What does The Free Ken offer?

• Sharp, Orginal, Insightful, Analytical Articles
• 1 Pre-determined free article
• A Newsletter named “Beyond The First Order” every weekday.
• A Newsletter named “The nutgraf” every Saturday.

What does the subscription offer?

• Everything covered above.
• Get 5 gift credits every month so that friends can read the articles.
• Gift 3 monthly subscription credits.

What do I like?

• Emails

When you open and read the Ken summary of the main article which they email every day, you will absolutely fall in love with it. You will rarely come across such emails by other newspapers. This itself will force you to actually subscribe for the Premium version.

• Beyond the First Order(BFO)

The Ken added BFO recently in its portfolio. If there is one thing that I absolutely love more than the above, it is the BFO newsletter every weekday. I found the content of BFO really original, insightful and meaningful.

• The Nutgraf

The most important event from last week is explained in The Nutgraf. It goes very deep and tries to explain the same in 10 mins. When you read it, get ready to be immersed. Unbiased views from all perspectives are enlightened. It is simply the best thing that Ken offers.

• Clean Interface

The website of Ken is similar to Medium. It is minimalist in design and has an attractive white background that immediately catches your eye. A good blend of white and red nudges you to buy that subscription.

What I do not like?

• One story a day articles

The Ken offers its readers one article a day. The reason it offers just a story a day so that its readers read insightful articles and not just news. Are the articles really insightful? Do they force me to actually think on an important issue?

In the above pic, I found just 2 articles that were actually insightful. Everything else is just news presented to you in a 1 story a day format. Every once in a while, there are some in-depth stories covered. But they are so rare that I doubt it makes sense to actually pay for the subscription. I regularly read the Mint Newspaper. I found Mint provides much more opinion based articles on much more important topics.

• Price

The subscription plan for the India edition has 2 options — Quarterly — Rs 2,065 and a Yearly — Rs 3,245.

The subscription plan for the South East Asia edition has 2 options — Quarterly — Rs 3,540 and a Yearly — Rs 8,496.

There is also a student subscription which offers a 50% discount.

Both India and SEA editions are different. Paying for one doesn’t provide access to the other. Considering the price points offered, The Ken basically nudges to opt for the Annual plan and it is not cheap.

Let`s compare the pricing of the world-renowned The Economist. It provides an introductory offer(12 weeks for just Rs 1,799). The Economist provides more content with a Global view at a much lesser cost.

Let`s do simple math — There are 52 weeks(365 days) in a year. Remove 104 days(weekends) and know there are 264 days. Give and take, you will read approx 260 articles on an annual subscription. The cost per article comes to Rs 12.5(3245/260).

Conclusion —

Does it make sense to pay so much for so little? Will I renew my Ken Subscription? You are better off with the Free version of the Ken which offers BFO and nutgraf. The daily stories are just not insightful enough and it adds very little value. Save that money for something else.

Update — BFO and Nutgraf are behind a paywall now. However, it is absolutely worth it to subscribe to BFO and Nutgraf.