Category: Over The Top Services

Mumbai: Prime Video has released a new session of ‘Maitri: Female First Collective.’ The collective is an effort to help build a community for women in media and entertainment where they can discuss their experiences, challenges, and successes, as well as offer their perspective and advice on how to effect positive change. The latest session features discussions on making the industry more inclusive for women by creating more opportunities, recognising contributions, and building a safer work environment, and is graced by nine eminent women professionals from Indian entertainment, including producers, directors, creators, talent, and corporate leaders.

Moderated by the ‘Maitri’ creator and curator Smriti Kiran, the participants comprised Prime Video creator of ‘Maitri’ & head of India originals Aparna Purohit; writer & director Indhu VS; writer, director & producer Ratheena Plathottathil; creator & producer Elahe Hiptoola; actor & director Parvathy Thiruvothu; actor, producer & performing artist Rima Kallingal; filmmaker & cinematographer Shreya Dev Dube; and Cinematographer Neha Parti Matiyani.

Prime Video also launched a social community for ‘Maitri’ in order to spark conversations and foster meaningful collaborations, allowing women in entertainment to share successes and work together to overcome challenges more easily. Sharing deeply personal stories and experiences, the participants discussed the progress made thus far as well as the challenges faced by female professionals in the industry, whether in film, streaming, or television, covering topics such as conscious and unconscious bias, gender stereotyping, safety, and much more.

The attendees’ obvious camaraderie set the tone for the session as they shared their thoughts, opinions, and learnings on dealing with difficult situations. They reaffirmed their commitment to the collective and to working together to find potential solutions to create balanced female representation through the powerful medium of modern storytelling during the conversation. The forum agreed that having women in decision-making roles is critical to ensuring that more women are employed, basic logistics of safety and hygiene are addressed, and narratives are balanced and equitable.

Purohit said, “With the new session of ‘Maitri,’ we wanted to take stock of where we stand with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion, understand the challenges ahead, and collaborate to find the right solutions.”

“We are very heartened by the encouragement and support we have received for ‘Maitri: Female First Collective’ so far. While it is a gradual journey, I am happy to see some change already coming through. To hear things like ‘we have women writers in our writers’ rooms,’ or ‘our women characters have agency’ and ‘our content will definitely pass the Bechdel test,’ in conversations with creators is, for me, a major step in the right direction. At Prime Video, we remain deeply committed to DEI. As the next step, we want to strive to have at least 30 per cent women as HODs across all our productions,” she added.

Kiran stated, “’Maitri’ is a space we all wanted but didn’t have. It has been created to connect women working across the vast and varied Indian film industry, have honest conversations about challenges we face, try and find solutions to those problems, and build opportunities that lead to a seismic shift in representation. It is that first step one hopes will lead to giant leaps.”

Mumbai: Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts (US), Brightcove is an intelligent video streaming, monetisation, and communications platform. The cloud-based online video platform has been powering live and video-on-demand experiences for leading broadcasters, publishers, and brands since 2004. It creates the world’s most reliable, scalable, and secure video technology solutions to build a greater connection between companies and their audiences, no matter where they are or on which devices they consume content. In more than 80 countries, Brightcove’s video platform enables businesses to sell to customers more effectively, media leaders to stream and monetize content more reliably, and every organisation to communicate with team members more effectively. Brightcove’s operations in India began in 2017. With two technology and engineering Emmy Awards for innovation, uptime that consistently leads the industry, and unmatched scalability, Brightcove continuously pushes the boundaries of what video can do.

Indiantelevision.com caught up with Brightcove senior director of strategy Asia Pacific Greg Armshaw. He consults with enterprises, helping them create strategies to build businesses with video. He has more than 20 years of experience in advertising and digital marketing and has rich experience building consumer offerings in the enterprise brand and media sectors in Asia. Armshaw has been associated with Brightcove since 2017 and has led the company to achieve a dominant market position in the region with digital-first companies, free-to-air TV providers, and pay-TV content owners. He serves on the board of directors of the Asia Video Industry Association and is a frequent industry commentator. He is based in Singapore and has been working across Asia since 2006.

Excerpts:

On the market gap

When Brightcove was founded 18 years ago, phones weren’t as smart, broadband wasn’t as wide, and video still meant DVDs. At the time, the problem Brightcove sought to solve was how to deliver and monetise videos at scale over the internet. The extensive adoption of the internet globally resulted in video services gaining momentum, which posed a massive opportunity for us. It helped us grow right along with the industry we helped create. We continue to develop and refine our technologies to provide the most innovative, effective, and reliable technology streaming platform to empower organisations to achieve their immediate and long-term goals.

On the progress

By building the world’s most trusted streaming technology company, Brightcove has revolutionised video experiences. We support organisations in over 80 countries around the world monetise video, increase sales, motivate employees and most importantly, help businesses build meaningful connections with their audiences. By setting the standard for quality, reliability, and analytics, our brand today truly represents the company we’ve become, and it reflects the boldness of our vision to push the boundaries of what is possible with video.

From an innovation perspective, we have over 90 patents and continue to lead the industry in R&D and thought leadership. We continue to invest our time in evolving the industry, as well as our own continued leadership in streaming technology.

On USP vis-a-vis competition

Brightcove gives businesses what they need in a single, end-to-end solution. Our industry-leading streaming platform offers unmatched reliability with 99.99 per cent uptime, infinite scalability, deeper cutting-edge analytics, world-class security features, out-of-the-box integrations, multiple monetisation options, and flexible layouts, making it easy for businesses to deliver exceptional high-quality video experiences.

We are one of the oldest and only profitable online video platforms. This puts us in a great position to continue to reliably service our customers in these uncertain economic times. For organisations building businesses with video, we take away any risk that their key streaming provider may not still be operating as a business six months or a year from now.

On the covid impact

The pandemic saw a rise in online video consumption worldwide, which proved to be an evolutionary event for Brightcove. To evolve with the changing demands, we unveiled a complete re-imagining of our brand with significant investments in our brand identity, advertising campaigns, and product ecosystem. With the new, bold messaging and vibrantly redesigned visual identity, our goal was to position the video platform as an innovative partner to deliver exceptional video experiences. This propelled our company to a record-breaking quarter.

On the solutions provided

Brightcove provides monetisation models that work best for any business’ content needs. Our solutions offer flexibility for subscription, ad-supported, transactional pay, and hybrid models, enabling businesses to maximise revenue.

Brightcove Media Studio, our flagship media solution offers multiple monetisation paths and an advanced platform to enable distribution across all devices and platforms, with the simplicity to create beautiful viewing experiences to engage any audience. Built on Brightcove Video Cloud, our media studio lets you securely and easily scale your media operations on our reliable platform, so you can focus more on developing content and growing your audience.

These topics can go a lot deeper than just the models available. For example, if you monetise through advertising, the performance of the playback alone can increase the engagement of the user and therefore the number of ads they see. Brightcove research has shown that 32 per cent of users will abandon a service if the streaming performance is bad. In the area of subscription, it is common for streaming audiences to jump from service to service – the subject of churn is discussed widely in the industry. If marketing teams have a strong understanding of audience viewing behaviour, they can provide personalised marketing proven to maximise revenue. Brightcove provides the insights and audience segmentation to make this possible.

On the investments in technology

Future-proofing our streaming technology investments is a key consideration at Brightcove. Our relentless investment in R&D to provide the best streaming technology in the market has been rewarded. Brightcove was recognised with two Emmy Awards by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for excellence and creativity in technology and engineering. We have been pioneering innovative technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), integrations, video analytics, and cloud-based transcoding as part of our products to make video delivery as robust, efficient, and easy to use as possible.

While we invest in a number of areas and continue to be awarded patents for our innovations, the benefits for customers are in a number of areas, including: operational efficiency—our constant R&D drives down the unit cost of a broadcast grade streaming service—and marketing excellence—Brightcove continues to invest in providing the tools to attract, entertain, and retain customers while delivering a premium user experience and the ability to capture revenues in exchange.

On web3 and in the metaverse

The metaverse and web3 are creating an opportunity for brands to redefine how they reach and engage with their customers, closing the gap between the physical and digital realms. While the final manifestation of the metaverse is unclear, what we are seeing is the advancement of technologies that will hopefully make immersive experiences more seamless. The promise of the metaverse is that resulting technologies and experiences will enable businesses to create more personalised experiences to build their brand further. With the ability to own, control, and monetise projects in web3, content creators can further influence their audiences. Shifting advertising and marketing to the phygital space can help brands build communities of brand ambassadors to capture the attention of millions of new customers, especially young users and millennials.

On the producer economy

The internet has disintermediated many businesses, and entertainment and education are no different. Those previously identified as professional content creators are finding new ways to build destinations online. In a similar disintermediation, the gatekeepers of access have been swept aside by social media. It has removed the impediments of capital and editorial control for individuals and groups to find and build audiences. Now that many of these producers of content have established audiences in the millions, we are seeing that to engage with and enrich their audience communities, they are looking to build their own brand destinations online.

This does not mean abandoning their roots on social media; it just means building an experience that they can control where they can build a direct relationship with their fans.

This is the maturing of the highly successful UGC tier of creators beyond the channel and into the platform. Content producers are able to build their own digital destinations, manage and distribute their own content, own and measure data, and, most importantly, serve their audiences and amplify the value exchange.

On the importance of India as a market

India is at a critical time in the digital revolution, with over 658 million active internet users and a digital video audience of 353.2 million in 2022. It is thus a sizable market for online video, and online video viewership is continuing to grow exponentially, representing a tremendous opportunity for Brightcove. We began our India operations in 2017, and even prior to our official opening, we were powering video for some of the top-tier Indian media companies.

India is a wonderful market for Brightcove. We have amazing customers, and we have a growing team across engineering, support, and sales in India. With an incredible creative culture as well as businesses faced with the challenge of serving hundreds of millions of people, we see opportunities with enterprises and entrepreneurs every day. We have continually taken inspiration from this market to innovate our products. For example, we established multilingual metadata in our platform to allow the same video to be referenced using information in multiple languages to support our customers in India. 

On the growth strategy for India

With streaming technologies being utilised widely across the Indian market, we see good growth opportunities in traditional verticals such as news, sports and entertainment. We are also seeing significant transformation in the enterprise, where digitisation borne from the pandemic has seen the increased adoption of video in such verticals as retail, marketing and sales, and corporate communications. We see all these areas as opportunities for growth in India.

On the potential of AVoD vs. SVoD in India

India’s streaming video market will reach three billion dollars in revenue in 2022, enabling SVoD and AVoD to flourish and co-exist. Only 31 per cent of India’s digital video audience are paying subscribers, while the remaining 69 per cent are AVoD audiences. The AVoD model helps generate the most views, while SVoD can likely result in the highest ARPU. Additionally, some OTT services are eyeing ad-supported subscription tiers to attract audiences. This adaptable hybrid offering of tiered subscription models and windowing specific content has recently gained traction as it aids in creating a smooth transition for the audience to a subscription model.

As the market continues to grow, we can expect to see strong growth in both AVOD and SVOD. In order to maximise the potential of the market, we would recommend that content rights owners keep an open mind to all revenue generating opportunities because consumers value them differently at different moments in their entertainment journey.

On web3 over web2 for content creators

The world wide web gives a pretty good platform for content monetisation and has given more creators access to audiences that were previously inaccessible.  The promise of web3 facilitates an ecosystem where the content creator can continue to derive value from their creation throughout the life of that content. Once widely adopted, web3 will hopefully deliver greater prospects for long-term monetisation.

Web3 will likely propel the move from the creator to the producer, which is critical. The significant difference will be the increased level of control for every content creator. In web 2, the different platforms take a good chunk of the revenue from the creator’s content in exchange for facilitating technology and audience reach. However, web3 will likely enable more producers to build their own platforms to engage with audiences, leading creators to truly own their content and keeping more of the economics of their most loyal fans.

On legacy companies entering the D2C business

Implementing a streaming-first content strategy is critical for D2C businesses to create rich media experiences, collect first-party data, and significantly maximise their investment to own their digital future. Businesses can provide personalised messaging and refine their audience’s journey by using analytics to understand content performance and audience interests. Thus, by making streaming video the foundation of their content strategies and thinking about content like a media company, D2C businesses can use this powerful medium to grow in the new digital world.

On CTV causing ad wastage globally

CTV’s proposition, in my opinion, is to counteract waste in broadcast television. CTV advertising facilitates addressable audiences in the same high-engagement environment as broadcast TV.

CTV is a rapidly evolving part of the media landscape, and as more audiences shift their viewing habits to online streaming, likewise advertising dollars are following suit. The challenge for advertisers is how to navigate the complexity of a relatively new industry and the challenges of a quite fragmented audience, the various ways to buy ad inventory, and how to standardise on measurement and monitoring. As more viewers shift to CTV and this becomes the primary source of ad revenue, the industry will quickly evolve, creating better experiences for both the advertiser and the viewer.

The challenge perhaps for the advertiser is that their agency has a team for traditional television and a team for digital. CTV and the broader OTT/streaming combine elements of both, and it will be up to advertisers to demand that their agencies properly understand how the different ‘channels’ of television content should be purchased.

Mumbai: Gaming content & marketing company Trinity Gaming India has announced its partnership with Dubai-based EmChain FZE to facilitate business worth $10 million and to train, mentor, and provide revenue streams for creators in the web3 & blockchain spaces.

Managing the majority of the Indian creator market share and a gaming community of over 40 million, Trinity Gaming, along with EmChain, aims to generate business from global developers and publishers in the P2E (Play to Earn), crypto, and NFT gaming spaces. This collaboration will allow web-based gaming content to generate new revenue streams for Indian influencers while also providing opportunities to collaborate with brands and game developers in global markets such as the MENA, SEA, and US.

Founded by Abhishek Aggarwal and Shivam Rao in 2019, Trinity Gaming caters to publishers, platforms, and brands. Trinity is a creator service provider (CSP) to Facebook and exclusive to the Facebook Gaming Partner Program, managing over 700 creators. The company also caters to Krafton in India by exclusively facilitating content, events, and marketing activities for the brand in the country.

Talking about the partnership, Trinity Gaming India co-founder and COO Shivam Rao said, “By working together, we can explore Web3 game prospects for our creators, which will enable them to commercialise their skills. With the increasing interest in play-to-earn games, enthusiasts will now be able to explore newer opportunities to experience and monetise web3 platforms.”

EmChain CEO Towqeer Gilkar states, “Given the massive market opportunity with the highest number of active wallet holders in the world and 400 million plus active gamers, India has the potential to become a global leader in the web3 space. EmChain plans to capitalise on this by delivering quality content and distribution through Trinity’s network of creators and influencers.”

Lack of awareness for technologies such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs inhibits the average Indian gamer. By sheer modelling of monetary success and enjoyment of new gaming content, Trinity’s influencers will play a key role in raising future adoption levels of web-based gaming content by the overall Indian gaming community.

Trinity aims to ease the adoption of web3-based gaming content through education and will introduce a daily podcast called ‘Emchain Podcast’ that will talk about web3, blockchain, and P2E games, available on streaming platforms like Spotify and YouTube.

Mumbai: OTT platforms have become the mainstay for the entertainment needs of the globe; especially in recent years with the internet activity in India reaching an astonishing 749 million across the country. To put a perspective on sheer numbers, Indian M&E Industry today stands valued at $26 billion with two-third of growth in the last three years coming from the digital subsegments. Since the last five years, the Indian government has been pushing the agenda of digitization of the country, leapfrogging India into the future and therefore on the back of that OTT sector revolutionised entertainment, regardless to say that pandemic was a further catalyst to this revolution.

Bespoke, premium interactive content at the tip of fingers

One distinctive way that OTT platforms carved a niche for themselves was by understanding the need for targeted content as well as exclusivity in terms of entertainment. People who were bored with the daily soap fare on broadcast was a large unserved base and they made OTT platforms their main choice of entertainment; as rather than streaming 100 channels at the same time, they allowed people to pick and choose the content they wanted to stream as per their convenience. The other experience that super fans are loving is the interactivity and the immersive content. There is this mass movement of fans participating and creating content around content via creating an avatar and live streaming, playing games, speaking, singing etc. and gaining followers. Even live lock screen content is now witnessing engagement and participation that opens another avenue for OTT platforms to explore with snackable content gaining traction across social media, news, gaming and sports.

Making exclusive, well made and high-quality content at the consumer convenience, the new normal, rather than waiting every day for content to be served as per the broadcast timings.

Revenue explosion: SVoD vs AVoD

We all are now well aware of the chord cutting that has already happened across metros and is now spreading to tier two and three cities; Standing at a staggering 85-90 million subscriptions today, this figure is set to reach 160-165 million mark around 2027 as per BCG report. Also willingness to pay for premium content is showcased in the faster growth of SVoD (16X over the past three years) over AVoD segment and the revenue projection states that by 2030 SVoD will contribute 55-60 per cent of the OTT revenue segment. Even advertisers are now recognising the value of digital medium with Digital native share of the top 50 advertisers spending rising from seven per cent in 2020 to 26 per cent in 2021.

Customer experience: customization & microgenres

“I prefer watching shows or movies that have a good storyline irrespective of the language. With easy access to content from multiple languages and genres, I watch a lot more multilingual content.” Says a consumer as per BCG report on OTT 2022… Self explanatory as to how OTT has cut the language barriers across to highlight good content products, whether regional or global or the GLOCAL trend. Today regional languages enjoy 35 per cent share on OTT platforms that cover dialects as well leading to microgenres of content.

With this mass adoption, OTT platforms recognized the importance of a user-friendly experience, ease of journey, customised targeting via content, ads and organic tools, One click subscription, vertical videos on mobile, hassle free payment options, Buffer free experience, customised playlists and add ons, Recommendation engines, loyalty programs, launch strategies and freebie deals for the viewers and the list goes on, trying to win the hearts of the viewers and therefore the Consumer loyalty. The Idea at all times is to make consumers feel that the platform cares and wishes to build a deeper understanding between them…

Connected across

Video OTT saw 4X increase across connected devices like Smart TVs, Fire across the last five years. Viewers have the option of multiple subscriptions across various devices, which also leads to a very interesting theory of marketers being able to speak to viewers across devices with targeted ads. Viewers interact with their devices differently throughout the day and marketers need to understand these nuances well before creating a media strategy. The other point emerging from Connected devices rise is the quality of the content and running in two parallel tracks of Individual and family led consumption. Mobile/laptop driving individual and smart TVs driving family consumption largely, leading to content creation and targeting accordingly.

Reimagining future

As OTT Industry takes a larger share of M&E Industry, certain factors will rule the roost and drive the growth; In short, as OTT platforms proliferate, aggregators will come into play and business models will need a rethink. The Infrastructure will evolve and will need to be supported through for further interactive and immersive experiences as well as AI and ML for better targeting. Demand will emerge further for disruptive technological assets that are easy to use and that will need certain skill sets and talent workforce. While the government is, of course, pushing for digital bharat, codes and regulations on OTT content will need to be handled carefully to allow creativity to stay at par with consumer expectations. And saving the most important for last, consumer value, consumer loyalty and keeping consumer at the centre of it all is what will keep pushing mass adoption, making OTT the mainstay of entertainment.

The author of this article is business strategy & growth consultant Divya Dixit.

Mumbai: Filmfare OTT Awards 2022 on Thursday announced that Sony LIV has bagged a whopping 19 wins at the Filmfare OTT Awards 2022.

Sony LIV’s space biopic-drama Rocket Boys led the nominations with 15 mentions, out of which it won some of the most coveted titles like best series, best director series (Abhay Pannu), best actor, drama, critics (male) went to Jim Sarbh for his role as ace nuclear scientist Dr. Homi J. Bhabha, along with best screenplay, best costume design, best production design, best cinematographer, and best VFX in the series category. 

Equaling the number of wins was the platform’s family thriller, Tabbar, which won the best series critics, along with wins for best director series, critics (Ajitpal Singh), best actor, series (male): drama (Pawan Malhotra), best actor, series (female): drama, best supporting actor, series (male): drama (Gagan Arora), best supporting actor, series (female): drama (Supriya Pathak Kapur), amongst others. 

The third season of Sony LIV’s family entertainer also bagged awards for best comedy (series/specials), with Jameel Khan and Geetanjali Kulkarni winning the best actor, series (male): comedy and best actor, series (female): comedy categories respectively.

The winning streak continues for the platform as last year Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story and Maharani took over the awards by storm. Promising a strong content lineup for the year ahead, the platform definitely has something for everyone in stores next year too!

Moj, a short video app, has released its year-end wrap-up, which includes information on creator growth, what trended in 2022, regional viewership trends, and trends that are expected to continue in 2023. Micro-influencers and regional language content are expected to be the next big thing on Moj, along with the use of lenses that encouraged creators to flood the platform with fun content throughout the year in 2022. Moj, which was launched in July 2020, is the largest Indian short video platform, with nearly 300 million monthly active users. Every day, three million pieces of content are uploaded to the platform, which receives close to six billion views.

Looking at the trends observed on Moj in the year gone by, Moj and ShareChat, content strategy and operations senior director Shashank Shekhar said, “The year 2022 saw Moj, and our community, grow bigger and stronger. For us, it was a year of breaking out of the clutter through innovative features, creative collaborations, and creator monetisation. We reached several milestones not just around the tremendous growth in our creator community but also with never-seen-before creative interventions, which provided our creators avenues for monetisation and gave brands an opportunity to engage authentically and organically with their audiences. Moj is geared up for 2023, and we hope to continue our journey towards gaining further inroads to the heartland of India and, of course, holistically grow our creator community by helping them build a sustainable career as an Indian creator.”

Moj creators ‘Minted’ success

Moj creators are compensated monetarily for their creative and engaging content on Moj Live and short videos using Moj’s in-house currency, Mints. The creators can redeem Moj Mints for real money. In 2022, 104K creators from various genres earned over 3.5 billion Mints, or $25 million. The most popular ways for creators to earn money on Moj were virtual gifting, brand collaborations, and participating in challenges.

Romance & relationships was the most popular genre in terms of Mints, accounting for 32 per cent of all Mints. Following that was comedy & fun, which received 23 per cent of the Mints. In 2022, Moj creators Khwahish Gal, Priya Biswas, and Amit Jaiswal were among the highest Minters.

Moj Live

With cutting-edge tools and features for managing large-scale live sessions in multiple languages, some Moj Live sessions have attracted up to two million viewers. Moj has supported nearly 2 million live streams since its formal launch on July 1 and has nearly 1.5 million daily active users on Live. Moj has had 90 million minutes of live content consumed, with nearly two billion real-time engagements with the creators.

Unique Moj features such as the ‘Creators Battle’ (two creators take on each other on Livestream), the ‘Gifters Battle’ (whoever sends the most virtual gifts wins the battle), and the ‘Voters Battle’ (whoever votes the most via. virtual gift wins the battle) were introduced to increase engagement and make Live sessions more entertaining.

In 2022, users gave nearly five million virtual gifts to their favourite creators via Moj Live sessions. Celebrities such as Varun Dhawan, Jhanvi Kapoor, Jacqueline Fernandez, Amit Trivedi, Lucky Ali, Jubin Nautiyal, Neha Kakkar, and others have used this feature to interact with their fans and promote upcoming projects.

Regional growth

Tamil viewers increased by nearly 71 per cent, followed by Telugu and Bhojpuri. Over 300 million videos in regional languages were created, with a total of 50 billion views, a trend that is expected to continue.

Lenses

On Moj, the year was all about quirky and fun lenses. Over 130 million videos were created this year using the 766 lenses now available on the platform, accounting for 18 per cent of all videos created on the platform.

Emoji GIF, Emoji Mood, Paisa Paisa, Frame Me, and Makeover were some of the most popular lenses. One of the popular lenses inspired the creation of trends such as ‘Paisa Paisa,’ which saw over 500K videos made with it and over 1 billion views in just two and a half months. Beauty lenses such as Brightside, Warm Vanilla, and Icy Blue were popular among teenagers, contributing to more than seven million videos.

Music

Music was an important part of the entertainment on Moj in 2022, elevating the short video experience to the next level. Moj’s creators used a wide range of music to set trends on the app, including old classics, the most recent lofi remixes, regional music, and even independent music. Regional and local songs accounted for 20 per cent of all music trending on Moj, with the most popular being Bullet (Telugu), Gypsy (Haryanavi), and Ra Ra Rakkama (Kannada).

Film music accounted for 55 per cent of trending music on the platform in the last six months, with 20 per cent being new releases. Manike, Meri Jaan, Kesariya, and Bullet were the top trending new film music releases.

Non-film music accounted for approximately 45 per cent of trending music, with the most popular songs including Think About You, Gypsy, Dhokha, Kuch Baatein, Pagla Pagli 3, Dhoke Pyaar Ke, Tumsa Koi Pyaara, and Baarish Ki Jaaye, among others.

The most popular songs from the 1990s were by Alka  Yagnik, Kumar Sanu, Lata Mangeshkar, and Udit Narayan. More than 30 million videos were created, with 76 billion video plays on their songs.

Moj creators

The platform has evolved into a creative haven for singers, dancers, comedians, and fitness enthusiasts from across the country. For Moj creators, it has been the ultimate entertainment destination. Moj created nearly 150K earning opportunities for Moj creators this year through challenges, collaborations, and virtual gifting.

Many Moj creators have built a following by catering to a specific demographic. Moj creators such as Neetu Nair, Riya Nehal, Bhavi Chandramani, and Aishwarya Kanna have landed roles in films and music videos. Because of his success on Moj, another creator, Himanshu Srivastava from Gairatganj, MP, opened a dance studio in Mumbai. Regional creators experienced significant growth on Moj in 2022. Ashish Dash from Toraniapal, Odisha, became the first Odia creator to reach one million followers on Moj.

Collaborations

This year, Moj worked with over 75 brands and ran nearly 150 influencer-led bespoke campaigns. Thums Up (12 billion views), Emami (4.2 billion views), Dettol (10 billion views), and other brands worked with Moj to create engaging hashtag challenges with unique AR-supported lenses and hook steps that received massive traction in Tier II and III markets.

Several new and unique partnerships in 2022 assisted in scouting and discovering various talents in India. This year saw the launch of numerous digital-first experiences on Moj. For the first time, Femina Miss India 2022 held their auditions digitally on Moj, and Sony Entertainment Television hosted India’s Got Talent’s Wildcard entry (IGT) auditions on Moj. Moj was recently used as an audition platform by Thirukumaran Entertainment’s production house to scout for the lead in the upcoming Tamil film, Hyena.

Mumbai: BabyG has been awarded the title of “Best Hidden Gems App of 2022” by Google Play in India. This announcement was made as a part of Google Play’s “Best Apps of 2022” annual awards to recognise the best apps and games on the Play store. Google added six apps to its winning list for 2022.

BabyG is an early development app that caters to all the parenting needs from infancy to three years of age. It is a baby development tracker that allows parents to look into their kid’s milestones and activities and show recipes, stories, and more according to their wishes. BabyG is the one-stop app for the development of your little one. The app has put together a team and advisory panel that is a mix of early development specialists, child experts, technology creators, business professionals, and parenting enthusiasts. All of whom share a passion for smart parenting. Launched last year, the app currently has 200K+ users across the world.

Speaking on the win, BabyG founder and CEO Birma Ram said, “We are incredibly humbled that Google Play chose BabyG for the “Best of 2022″ awards. BabyG was designed to promote growth and learning in babies through playful activities, aiming to provide parents with a wholesome ecosystem they can rely on to give their children the best foundation. We are fortunate to receive love from 200K+ parents across different countries in a short time. Building a universal app that can be easily adapted to other cultures is vital to our mission. We are grateful to Google Play for making it significantly easier to do this and helping us with learnings and insights to improve the app for our users.”

Mumbai: OML Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.’s latest comedy-drama series, Half Pants Full Pants, which premiered on Amazon Prime Video on 16 December, promises to capture the spirit of childhood in the smaller towns of India.

This eight-episode, lighthearted series is directed by V. K. Prakash and star child actors Ashwanth Ashokkumar and Kartik Vijan, along with renowned actors Ashish Vidyarthi and Sonali Kulkarni.

OML Entertainment held a private screening in Mumbai on Tuesday, which saw the cast, the creators, and many from the industry in full attendance.

Half Pants Full Pants is adapted from Anand Suspi’s eponymous book of the same title, and it is set in a small town in South India, before the age of the internet and mobiles, where the adventurous and ambitious seven-year-old boy Anand, aka Dabba, lives. He and his friend, the obedient and well-mannered Giddi, go on adventures that will warm audiences’ hearts and make them miss the good old simple days of mischief and innocence.

“We are extremely excited to associate with Prime Video for this series and bring it to audiences across the world. Half Pants Full Pants is a wholesome show that will resonate with viewers because of its universal theme of exploring childhood nostalgia in the 1980s,” said OML Entertainment creative head of OTT content Akansh Gaur.

“The joy of discovery and the fickleness of dreams told through the eyes of a seven-year-old is something that we believe will engage viewers. We are looking forward to everyone being taken back to the warmth of their childhood as they watch this show,” he added.

“Half Pants Full Pants is an experience that takes us back to a simpler time where life was untouched by technology and yet sparkling with wonder. Through the story of Dabba, his family, and friends, the series captures the magic of childhood in a period without phones or the internet—an unhurried pace of life that we often yearn for,” said director V. K. Prakash about the series.

He continued, “The cast and crew unanimously gravitated towards telling this story because of its simplicity and innocence. We cannot wait to share this with the world.”

“Half Pants Full Pants is not only a treat for audiences looking for a portal to the past, but also deeply creatively satisfying for us as OML Studios. We are grateful to VK Prakash, Anand Suspi, and Amazon Prime Video for partnering with us on this journey of exploration and collaboration, which we hold so dear at OML. OML has always believed in finding a way to tell unique stories, and none of this would have been possible without the tireless efforts of the entire team that made it possible. It truly took a village to raise this child. Please join us in enjoying the show,” said OML Entertainment CEO Gunjan Arya.