Mumbai: Today the lines are blurred as the streaming business is getting more complex and complicated, as monetization gets unclear. There is so much disruption happening, AVOD is offering SVOD and vice versa. Premium content is provided absolutely free and much more happening in this sector. Subscriber add-ons are slowing down. Time spent viewing on OTTs has plateaued for almost each and every platform, and high churn continues despite attractive annual schemes being offered by them. However, the good news is that the paid OTT subscription market in India continues to excite an increasing number of advertisers who are willing to put out their ads on these platforms. Mobile continues to be the main device of consumption even as connected TVs are increasingly getting into Indian homes. Investments in content continue to burgeon as viewers' insatiable appetite continues to demand more and more.
It is certain that this new ecosystem is calling for new relationships to be forged, new partnerships to be developed as TV manufacturers, Cable TV, and DTH, and telcos and other aggregators' presence as gatekeepers to their customers is increasingly being felt. So, what is the way forward for the OTT platforms? Where do the opportunities lie? What are the challenges?
This year's Vidnet 2023 looked at all these scenarios and more, and found answers to some of these questions along with experts from the industry.
The moderator for this session was 91 Film Studios founder & CEO Naveen Chandra followed by panellists: Arha Media & Broadcasting Media Pvt.Ltd. head of content & non-subscription revenue business Vasudev Koppieni, Oho Gujarati co-founder Amit Desai and Enterr10 Television Pvt. Ltd. head Akshat Singhal.
Chandra started the session with Koppieni and gave a short introduction on how Arha, a brand new platform at that time, launched an OTT platform to the Telugu audience, who are a huge movie going audience as majority of the people here are film lovers, got people to come out of theatres and watch OTT.
Koppieni said, “I start with the positioning statement of aha, which says we are 100% Telugu when it comes to AP and Telengana land, an in Tamil Nadu we say we are 100% Tamil, so that positioning statement was coined when we saw we can become a leading regional player and or strength lies in the regional which means owning our own language and culture. That is the day when the entire thing changed and that one positioning statement of saying 100%Telugu or Tamil defined every aspect of our platform.”
Before getting to Desai, Chandra gave a brief description on how launching Gujarati content on OTT is challenging as the content already dominated in Hindi TV serials by the likes of Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai, Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah etc which depicts the stories of real Gujarati family. Desai responded, “It has been a challenge to launch an OTT platform in Gujrati. But that challenge was even there when we tried to make our first Gujarati feature film which was released in multiplexes. What we have understood from our experience is that most of the time as content producers or workers , we always tend to underestimate our country’s audience. We always are of the opinion that this is not going to work with people or they won't like this. But the response we received for the feature films was great. The encouragement gave us the courage to venture into OTT and we were also positively surprised that many Gujarati audience ] were waiting for an OTT channel in Gujarati.
Chandra asked Singhal, “How do a Bhojpuri app can capture the YouTube ecosystem as for many years YouTube has breen providing free content whether movies, music online. To which Desai said, “Obviously YouTube is huge and they have all the old content and everything. But one thing unique about our app is we have all the old blockbuster exclusive films which are not avaiolable on YouTube and we also release every new movie on Saturday. There is a misconception among people that regional folks don’t like to pay for a content, but if you provide frequent films like we do, people will see value in your content so they will definitely pay.”
Chandra concludes the session by saying, “Just like the reputation of the regional industries is to be on time and to finish their projects on time, we would also end the session on time!”
