Blinkist was profitable for the first time in the 2020 financial year

The start-up has benefited from the coronavirus pandemic with its learning offer. Blinkist has now turned a profit for the first time.

In the 2020 financial year, Blinkist made a profit for the first time since it was founded: net profit for the year amounted to 728,000 euros. In 2019, the company still had a net loss for the year of over 10 million euros.

The start-up also benefited from the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. "The willingness to pay for learning content online has increased significantly in recent years and alternative learning options have become more and more important. This trend has been accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic," the company writes in its annual financial statements for 2020.

Nevertheless, growth in 2020 was lower than planned: instead of a 48% increase in turnover, the start-up only grew by 26.4% compared to 2019. The company cites the limited mobility of its customers during the lockdown as the reason for this. The content is often listened to while commuting by train or car. "As far fewer people were on the move due to the lockdown and had more time available instead, Blinkist found itself increasingly competing with longer formats, such as films," the annual report states. Despite this, Blinkist was able to gain eight percent more subscribers last year.

Niklas Jansen, Holger Seim and Tobias Balling founded Blinkist in Berlin in 2012. The start-up offers an app that briefly summarizes and explains the content of non-fiction books. Subscribers can read through or listen to the summaries. The company is also represented in the USA.