ITV

Category: Over The Top Services

  • “We have a multi-headed monetization approach for Viu”- Vishal Maheshwari

    In January 2016, emerging markets OTT service Vuclip – operated by Hong Kong based PCCW –  appointed former Yahoo executive Vishal Maheshwari as country manager, India, close to the launch date of its Indian product. The Viu launch went through successfully three months later under his supervision. Since then the FMCG, telco and digital veteran has stealthily steered the service towards an enviable subscriber base of four million plus.

    Viu’s has been a no-nonsense-back-to-basics roll out in the country; it had none of the frills and bells and whistles that are associated with launches.

    Maheshwari has his task cut out for him. The OTT market is getting crowded with every one including his uncle, aunt and cousin believing that they could make a success of their streaming entertainment apps.

    But Maheswari believes that  Viu  is being built bit by bit, content piece by content piece, and customer by customer. And that it is on the right track.

    Maheshwari was part of Indiantelevision.com’s second edition  OTT conference Vident 2017 and he took part in a one on one conversation with founder, CEO and editor in chief Anil Wanvari. Excerpts:

    What is your view of India as a VOD market?

    We believe that this market is not a single homogeneous market, as a lot of people like to believe. We believe this a three tiered market. There is a bottom of the pyramid market which is called the mass market. There is a mid-market, which is being typically being catered to by mobile consumption and by apps.  And then there is the top end of the pyramid, that we have yet to see evolve over here. We think that eventually will happen. We are here to participate in the broad spectrum of the market. Currently we have offerings in the bottom of the pyramid in terms of the  B2B mass market offering . We have been so far been in the mid-market as we like to call It for a year and a half.  – the B2B offering

    I believe you have got a massive war chest. Apparently, Nickhil was quoted saying that he spent about 100 million dollars so far since PCCW came in. So how big is the war chest in India, if you would like to disclose that. If you don’t want to talk about the initiative in terms of local content, making sure you’ve distributed well across different devices whether it’s handsets or being inbuilt into Telco, apps etc.

    I think it is futile trying to talk about numbers in terms of millions of dollars of investments in so and so. It i suffices to say that this is a game of really deep pockets. I have always maintained that OTT is a very easy market to get into. Because I think the common understanding is that all you need is a little bit of content, slap on some technology, some vendors lurking around in Hyderabad and Bangalore who you can hire and get for cheap and you can get into the market.

    But OTT is a very very difficult market to stay in. And a lot of players who were there in this market are beginning to  sort of understand that. The key and the bottom line over here is you need very deep pockets to fundamentally stay in this game. I wish I new how long you need to sustain it; I wish I was a clairvoyant.

    Needless to say, I maintain that this is not a P&L business. It’s a balance sheet business. And you really got to have deep pockets and a very entrepreneurial attitude in terms of trying to win this market. If you try to play by the known rules of how these businesses are built, then there’s only one thing going to happen – you are gonna lose! Given that, we have our own game plan in terms of this market.

    I believe in terms of content, people expect a very different set of content from a premium OTT player. So there is UGC and the YouTube type content at one side and then there is TV broadcasting and cinema on the other side. What consumers expect of an OTT play is really something in the middle. They want content that is high quality, that is potentially cinematographic, in terms of finish, look and feel. And more importantly for the target audience that we are after, which is frankly the millennials, they want content which is real. They want content which reflects their aims, aspirations etc. So, I think you got to be very very careful in terms of how you go about executing your content game. I would say the mantra is being fresh and contemporary. Secondly, we believe regional is really an important play. We were actually the first ones to launch Telugu regional content a couple of months back and that I think pretty much took the industry by storm. That’s because the content put in over there was very high quality. The content that we produced along with Annapurna Studios, was original – Pilla and Pelli Gola.

    And what sort of traction did you get for those shows?

    I am not going to drop numbers again but let me tell you what we did. It was really interesting. Our entire philosophy towards this game of OTT is that it isn’t like a ‘one night stand.’ It is a hare and a tortoise game, but with a little bit of a difference. We don’t believe that ‘slow and steady’ is going to make us win. We believe ‘smart and calibrated’ is going to make you win.

    So when we actually launched our first suite of originals in the month of April, people were surprised, there was no brand campaign? There was  no full page in The Times of India?

    What we actually did over here was very simply put the content into the market, used all organic means to sort of see what the traction on the content was, ran that content frankly for a 10 week period, which is when we actually released our content and came back absolutely beaming in terms of  the results. The traction numbers that we were seeing over there were completely mind boggling as far as we were actually concerned. And if this year proof of the pudding is in the eating, we’ve actually come in and post that have commissioned another eight originals.

    When do we see these eight originals rolling out? Are they with the same production studios or are they with new studios?

    If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Yes, Vikram Bhatt did a couple of products with us. After Gehraiyaan and Spotlight, we have commissioned him again for another two products that will be out in the fourth quarter of this year. And you will see this new suite rolling out from the month of September onwards. We will continue to sharpen our focus on the regional market, we will be adding regional markets to our suite, we will continue our focus on Telugu and you will see some really high quality content coming for those regional markets.

    You were mentioning that you were actually going to do dual language production? Is it going to go beyond dual language, while doing a Hindi show?

    It is part of our overall DNA of experimenting. In our first round, what we actually did was create content specifically for Telugu, create content for Hindi, we have done dubs, we have done crossovers, we are actually studying how that market reacts, what their uptake on that sort of content is. And in the next phase what we are getting into is doing bilingual productions. It could make sense from an advertiser point of view.  It could make sense from a marketing economics point of view. So I think like any good old internet company we are really open to lot of experimentation and bilingual production is one of them. I don’t think the die is set as yet, we are still sort of in discovery mode on these types of things.

    Some numbers on your (monthly active users) MAUs and (daily active users)  DAUs? Downloads?

    We hate downloads because downloads is a bought number. Actually anyone can go out and buy those numbers. As company we are very focused on the metrics that can not be bought and the type of metrics we really focused on UVs (unique viewers), minutes per UV and returning users.

    I think these are the three sets we are absolutely concerned about. Those metrics you can not buy and you have to earn those metrics from the consumers.

    I think with all these three we are on top of the chart in terms of these numbers.

    We have minutes of usages in excess of 100 minutes a month. We have people coming back to us at least six to seven times in a month to view content and that is with the limited suite of the kind of content we have right now.

    Those are some very important numbers we look at and we think that, as content depth fundamentally expands, those numbers are actually going to go up. I think all indicators we are currently capped  on these two consumption metrics by the volume of depth we have available with us on our platform. So that’s the reason we are looking at large volumes of content getting commissioned because once that goes up we know the guy is going to come back to us.  

    You mentioned there are four and half million active users a month?

    Yes, that’s the number we had in the month of April in India.

    So the number has gone up?

    The number has moved up very significantly because April was when we started out with the original content. Those numbers are significantly north.

    Somebody who has visited once month is your active user?

    Everybody has got their own definition. We sort of tried to stick to the most acceptable definition that somebody at least consumed the video once a month and somebody who has  come in and just opened your app. We are sort of pretty clear in terms of the type of standard apply to us in terms of measurement. Honestly BARC coming in is going to be really very interesting.

    What lessons have you learnt in terms of distribution, the customer’s propensity to pay, content creation, technology. Sometimes acquiring a customer is not worth it that what some players are discovering. So the acquisition cost can go haywire and set your entire gameplan haywire.

    Our philosophy in terms of distribution is to go with where the customer is and therefore what we really followed has been a really multi-headed distribution strategy where we had content housed on our apps, we had content housed on our browser. We incidentally believed that the browser still have a very important role to play especially for certain types of content and specifically for certain types of devices. We have also got the Viu video audience network where we collaborated with a bunch of like minded sites who ingest our player. For instance, we have What the duck 2 today which is a cricketing product which runs on Cricbuzz also. We have a strategy in terms of YouTube, Facebook where we don’t hesitate to put our full form of original content. Therefore the strategy for distribution is very clear  – go where the customer is.

    In terms of relationship, we have a very deep relationship with Samsung, where every Samsung device that has been shipped out since November 2016, the Viu SDK ingested in every device as part and parcel of the my Galaxy 2.0 product. So, it’s a bit of a Trojan strategy that we are present on the best Android device that is out there. The underlying philosophy is don’t pull them in,  go also where they are that is the strategy we are going to continue.

    Coming to your questions of acquisition and acquisition cost, it’s a fairly bloody game at this particular point of time. Let’s face it,  your economics are going to tend to infinity and the only way any OTT player can counter that is frankly focus on the depth of engagement that he actually got.

    So there are two philosophies that drive us over there. Either I get you here and make sure that you stay with me for a prolonged period of time and you keep coming back to me. So the strategy of a  sustained-content-release calendar works really well. Or I  get you in and make you consume as much you can within a short period of time because I really can’t stop you from going. And I think that’s where a binge consumption strategy works really well.

    So from us what you will really see is a combination of sustained content release and binge watching strategy and that’s going to be very powerful in terms of trying to maximize the lifetime value of the customer as he comes in. And in terms of recouping your acquisition cost over there. Obviously, I think as we get a lot more brand visible, as brand Viu becomes known, and we expect those costs to move southwards. I think a combination of these two strategies will help us to turn the corner in terms of starting to break even at a unit economics.

    So what is the sweet spot for the price that customer can pay? You’re charging Rs99 apart from the free content that you are giving out to a premium subscriber. So is that a sweet spot  or is the Amazon price a sweet spot, Rs 40-45 when they announced.  What’s the sweet spot?

    Sweet spot is like saccharine, if you have too much of it is going to be very bitter. Our belief over here is customer are going to  pay you for value.

    Indians paid Rs 350 crore a few months back to watch a man beat up his daughters to make them wrestlers. And that’s Dangal.  People do pay for content.

    We think the fundamental point is it’s not about whether customer is willing to pay or not, it’s about the value he is seeing from what you are actually giving to him and we want to keep that power  to choose and decide in the hands of the customer.

    Our strategy is out and out a freemium pricing strategy. We believe that we will continue to give the customer the best possible value in terms of content. He can come and continue it without any barriers, as long as he does not have a problem to get somebody else to pay for him doing it via advertising. We believe we have to make advertising as non-obstrusive as possible. A bunch of initiatives we have taken over there. We collaborate extensively with Facebook and Google to ensure that advertising delveries should be non- obstrusive as possible. We are innovating in terms of ad monetization models. Native is a much abused word but we have taken it very seriously in terms of what are we doing while building our entire ad ecosystem and ad model around.

    At the end of it if we able to give enough value to that customer and he decides  that he actually doesn’t want to see your advertising, he will come and pay us. So we have the patience to sort of wait for customer to graduate from a free service to a paid service.

    Is that happening, the graduation?

    Honestly, at this point of time I don’t care. The one number I don’t look at is what is my free to paid conversion. I think it’s too early and anybody trying to build a castle on subscriptions from day one I think you are walking on  broken glass and it’s going to be very tough.

    On advertising side you have done some deals with DBS and you got some other partners on board?

    We got success with What The Duck 2 where we got DBS Yes we have DBS and Hike coming in as sponsors on the content. I think that’s a very good example of what the philosophy has been in terms of  getting the advertisers to participate as natively as possible in your content. We have recently done a show with McDowell’s known as Yaari No 1 which has Rana Dagubatti over there. It is like a Koffee with Karan kind of a show in Telugu which runs on Gemini TV. A very interesting  product where we actually have gone OTT plus TV simulcast at the  same time with an advertiser like McDowell’s actually coming in and sponsoring that particular product.  And you will see a lot more disruption over here in terms of the type of models we are looking at, they could be ad inventory based, those could be sponsorship based, branded content based or TV to OTT. So it’s going to be multi headed in terms of the monetization approach.  

  • Womens’s World Cup final draws record viewers on Hotstar

    MUMBAI: Cricket continues to rule in India. Even if you don’t have the likes of Virat Kohli, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sharma on the field or screen.

    The team at the 21st Century Fox owned Hotstar were more than happy to discover the upscaling in viewership that even women’s cricket has been getting.

    The recently concluded ICC Women’s World Cup 2017 final featuring India and England has notched up new records, if a press release from Hotstar is to be believed. The Indian cricketing eves lost by a slender margin; England’s ladies kept their nerves to pick up their trophy.

    Hotstar says India’s second-ever entry into a Women’s World Cup final had a peak concurrency of 1.9 million simultaneous viewers. And this happened in the tragic forty eighth over with India needing 11 runs to win off 12 balls.

    The release syas that “this was higher than the average concurrency of many of the marquee men’s cricket tournaments on Hotstar in the last year, a feat in its own right and an inflection point in women’s sports. While Vivo IPL 2017 saw a predictable list of state-wise tune-ins, consistent with team loyalties, the Women’s World Cup saw a surprise entrant in UP, which along with Maharashtra, contributed to 25 per cent of total viewership.”

  • Global digital platforms adapting locally for BARC’s EKAM

    NEW DELHI: Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC India)’s first product under EKAM brand, to be launched in the first quarter of 2018, will be measurement of video advertisements on digital platforms. Global digital platforms are being exhorted to make some quick changes in service features for adaption in the Indian environment.

    The ad measurement tool, which is part of several other such digital services, will have its findings or the data collected released on a daily basis, unlike the TV viewership and advertising-related data that BARC India puts out on a weekly basis.

    BARC India had earlier announced a phased roll-out of its digital measurement service under the brand name EKAM (Sanskrit for “One”). The EKAM suite of products will include EKAM Pulse, EKAM Beam, EKAM Stream, EKAM Ad-Scan and EKAM Integra.

    According to industry sources, the launch of the digital measurement products could get delayed as some of the global digital platforms operating in India are yet to tweak their systems to tailor them to Indian data measurement system that is being done by an industry body, unlike a private sector third party organization in western countries.

    BARC India is in dialogue with global digital platforms urging them to make some necessary changes in their features so such platforms adapt themselves quickly to the Indian data measurement environment, industry sources explained, adding the speed of making the tweaks could decide the launch of a digital measurement product. “If everything, including co-operation from global digital platforms, go as planned, an early launch could also be envisaged in late December 2017,” a source in the know of things said optimistically.

    Some of the top digital platforms, including global and India, sit on the technical committee of BARC India co-ordinating the rollout of digital measurements.

    Nielsen India, a company that had been doing TV audience measurement in India in association with WPP’s Kantar
    Media before BARC came into existence two years back, has been roped in by BARC as its primary digital measurement partner. Nielsen will fuse its global experience with India-specific adaptations to meet unique needs of the local market.
    The payment mode to become a paid subscriber of BARC India’s digital world data would also differ from that employed for TV-related data subscribers, which is about 0.8 percent of the total ad revenue generated by a company.

    EKAM Pulse will measure video ad campaigns. EKAM Beam, the next product lined up for release, will measure linear broadcast that is viewed on a digital device. EKAM Stream will measure both non-linear and pure play digital video content.

    BARC India will also provide industry with EKAM Ad-Scan, which will be a global first-of-its-kind product. It will give an overview of digital ads in India, look at where the advertising money is being spent and which sectors are producing more digital ads. The final product in the digital suite will be EKAM Integra that will help industry with common, robust and independent audience numbers giving more accurate incremental reach figures.  

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  • Balaji may formalise RIL stake purchase at 16 Aug EGM

    MUMBAI: Balaji Telefilms, in a communique to the BSE and the National Stock  Exchange, intimated about its extraordinary general meeting to be held on 16 August at “The Club”, 197, Juhu Versova Link Road, Opp.  D. N. Nagar  Police Station, Andheri (W), Mumbai- 400 053, Maharashtra.  The  cut-off   date   for   determining  the  shareholders  eligible   for   e-voting  is 9 August, 2017..

    The meeting proposes to conduct special business. Increase in authorised share capital: To consider and,  if thought fit, to pass, with or without modification, the following resolution as Ordinary Resolution: “Resolved that, in accordance with Sections 4, 13 and  61 and  other applicable provisions, if any, of the Companies Act, 2013 and  rules made thereunder, and  applicable provisions of the Articles of Association of the Company and  any other applicable law or laws,  rules  and  regulations (including  any  amendments thereto or re-enactment thereof  for the  time being in force),  the authorised share capital  of the Company be and  is hereby increased from Rs. 260 million divided  into 100 million equity  shares of Rs.  2  each and  30 million Preference Shares of Rs. 2 each to Rs. 360 million  divided into 150 million Equity Shares of Rs. 2 each and  Rs. 60 million divided  into 30 million Preference Shares of Rs. 2 each.

    Issue of 25.2 million equity shares on a preferential allotment / private placement basis: To consider and  if thought fit, to pass, with or without modification, the resolution as a Special Resolution: Balaji is seeking consent of the  members of the  company to create, issue, offer and  allot 2,52,00,000 equity  shares of the  Company of the  face  value  of Rs. 2/- each (“Equity Shares”) at a price  of Rs. 164/- which includes a premium of Rs. 162/- per Equity Share aggregating to Rs. 4.13 billion to Reliance Industries Limited in accordance with ICDR Regulations.

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  • 17 mn SVoD homes to generate $ 1.8 bn in West Asia & Africa by ’22

    MUMBAI: Middle East (West Asia) & North Africa OTT TV episodes and movies will generate revenues of US$1.75 billion by 2022; more than quadruple the US$428 million recorded in 2016.

    According to the Middle East and North Africa OTT TV & Video Forecasts report, SVoD’s dominance of the sector will grow. SVoD revenues will reach $1.23 billion by 2022 (or 70% of the OTT total); nearly $1 billion more than the 2016 total (56% of OTT revenues).

    Digital TV Research forecasts 17.27 million SVoD homes by 2022, up from 3.74 million recorded by end-2016. Turkey will remain the leader by some distance, having established a major local player as far back as 2011.

    The top six regional platforms (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Icflix, Starz Play, Iflix and Shahid Plus) will account for 39% of the region’s SVoD subscribers by end-2022, up from 34% in 2016. Extracting Israel and Turkey, these six platforms will account for 78% of SVoD subscribers by 2022 – down from 88% in 2016.

    Netflix will be the largest pan-regional SVoD platform by 2022, with an expected 3.26 million paying subscribers. This is more than quintuple the 2016 total. Longer-established Icflix will cross 2 million subscribers by 2022 – quadruple its 2016 total. Starz Play will add a further 1.60 million. Our forecasts of 695,000 subs for Iflix by 2022 only cover six of its eight current countries in the region.

    Digital TV Research principal analyst Simon Murray said: “A handful of mobile operators such as Orange, Zain, Ooredoo, Etisalat and Vodafone have assets across several countries. SVOD platforms can gain considerable economies of scale by signing distribution deals with mobile operators. Deals between mobile operators and SVoD platforms are already prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa – offering an example for the rest of the world to follow.”

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  • ALT Balaji announces Dhimaner Dinkaal – its first Bengali original

    MUMBAI: The clear message that came out of Indiantelevision.com’s second VIDNET was that you have to have exclusive or original programming. And delivering it in India’s regional languages – well that is something OTT players will have to do if they want to get granularity in their traction.

    Almost as if taking it as a cue, The Balaji Telefilms promoted ALT Balaji has looked to the east of India while announcing the launch of its second regional show Dhimaner Dinkaal. The language you may have got it by now from the title is Bengali. The digital series has well known Bangla artistes like Saswata Chatterjee, Sreelekha Mitra, Khoraj Mukherjee and Sudipta Banerjee and has Saugata Nandi helming it.

    Dhimaner Dinkaal is the story of an ordinary man (Dhiman played by Chatterjee) who lives a life of simplicity away from the madness of technology and internet. The show will explore how his life takes an unexpected turn when he is forced into embracing the new world of technology.

    Dhiman is confined to his old habits; he still believes that internet and modern technology are just a farce in third world countries. Dhiman lives in a contrasting world where his wife’s and daughter’s lives are dominated by internet but he prefers to breathe in a space devoid of technology. What happens when he is forced into the digital world? When his life turns upside down because a stranger enters via social media, will he be able to maintain his sanity?

    “ALTBalaji is the No 1 repository of exclusive and original digital content in Indian languages today. After launching with 6 Hindi and a Tamil show, we continue our commitment to Indian languages. We are confident that this will be a favourite for Bengalis in and out of India,” says ALT Balaji CEO Nachiket Pantvaidya.

    At launch, ALT Balaji had stated that it would be gradually be rolling out 32 originals on its digital OTT service over the next few months. And the introduction of Dhimaner Dinkaal at this time could be the first of many other shows that could be at the entry gate just waiting to be revealed to its four million odd audience that has downloaded the app, say sources. They further indicate that the 15 part Bengali series is quite likely to have a second season and has a budget of about Rs 600,000 per episode.

    Subscribers can only expect the slate of show launches to be spurred to a faster clip following the move by the Mukesh Ambani headed Reliance group to pick up a 24.92 per cent stake in Balaji Telefilms for Rs 413.28 crore.

    Clearly, the action in the Indian OTT space has only just begun.

  • Synergy between quality content & branding workable in digital space, feel industry experts

    MUMBAI: Providing young ‘jobbers’ in India with new, engaging and emotionally-connecting original OTT content that may be closer to their life, family or work situations with or without subtle brand integration would eventually lead to a pay-model (SVoD). And, that seemed to the underlying theme of ‘Expanding the content creator value chain’ session at the recent Vidnet 2017 organised by Indiantelevision.com in Mumbai.

    Moderator Sidharth Jain opened the discussion with four interesting models of the evolving OTT content some of which, as claimed, got 100 million views. One was the self-funded yet reasonably successful model of a Bollywood struggler, Navjyot Gulati’s short film ‘Best Girlfriend’. The second was Jyoti Kapur-Das’ Royal Stag branded ‘The Chutney’. The third experiment was YouTube-discovered Tamil director, who used his film proceeds to part-fund an original episodic series on Hotstar, and the fourth was the recent Amazon Prime-commissioned ‘Inside Edge’ model, which is loosely based on IPL and its evolution.

    Given this context, especially in the last two years, where did the panelists think the opportunities for content creators were? How could one use these learning to draw up strategies? Who is creating value and opportunities for creators? These were some of the posers by Jain to panelists, which included Reliance Broadcast Network Limited CEO Tarun Katial, Still and Still Media Collective founder Amritpal Singh Bindra, Monozygotic’s Raghu Ram, Viacom18 Digital Ventures head of content Monika Shergill and Perform Group director, content sales, India, Subhayu Roy.

    “Independent content creators getting some 100 million views underlines my impression that platforms (films, television or digital) dictate the kind of entertainment that will be produced let alone what will work and what won’t,” said Ram, adding that he believed television was for group viewing and mobile for individual viewing, which made all the difference.

    Monozygotic’s ‘Aisha My Virtual Girlfriend’ pocketed several international awards. “A lot of unconventional people who have been struggling in films and television,” Ram felt, “will find their voice on digital.”

    However, the nascent OTT industry is still experimenting, it seems. “Honestly, I feel, we have just begun. And, those who claim they know it all or have figured it out, are talking through their hat,” said Voot’s Monika Shergill. Though, she added that digital was an exciting and formula-breaking medium where people were “judging you all the time.”

    Referring to `It’s Not That Simple’ (Swara Bhaskar’s six-episode web series launched in October 2016), Shergill said that nobody was programming for women at that point in time and most shows were being made for “young, urban boys”. But, Voot chose to a show a disruptive subject for a mature female audience. “It was narrated and depicted tastefully and thought provokingly done,” she explained, highlighting serious subjects too could work brilliantly on a digital platform.

    Dwelling on demographics and experimenting with originals going forward, Shergill said Voot’s core TG was 18-30 years. “There is a misconception that we (OTT players) are catering to a very young or college-going audience,” she said, “But, in fact, we are targeting around 10 million first-jobbers who may have moved away from television and actively looking for stories that talk to them.”

    Rejecting a recently-coined phrase that OTT viewers and content lie “between Narcos and Naagin” as a headline-catching phrase, Shergill was of the opinion a large part of the Indian audience, however, was looking for good stories (and) not necessarily emotionally connecting with those (international) characters. “They (the audience) are looking for answers — life’s answers, which are closer to family and work situations,” she justified her stand on audience’s need.

    However, not everybody seems to have a definite handle on the kind of content that really worked. “Whether it is 10, 12 or 25-minute-series, nobody can guarantee the viewer’s attention as analytics may have found out,” Amritpal Singh said, admitting that a good story couldn’t be “supplemented, complemented or replaced” for sure. Singh has worked on all three formats of films, television and digital.

    While admitting that people learnt new tricks everyday in the digital space RBNL’s Katial felt like the cinema audience changed from single screen theatres to that of a multiplex with everybody becoming a multiplex audience eventually, the digital audience also is changing evolving. “Crucial changes took place (in the audience profile) after the arrival of Reliance Jio…the profile of the video viewer changed completely,” he asserted, explaining that digital has opened up a new class of viewers.

    “Although, on the digital platform one gets the time and space to do newer stuff and feel satisfied, I don’t think anybody is going to make path-breaking shows such as `Narcos’ for sometime (in India) until the audience evolves and stabilizes,” Katial said, adding, however, the journey would be “enriching” — there would be actually opportunities to do many different things.

    Does one needs to look at segmentation such as regional content, low cost or premium content, regional or pan-India market? It could work sometime. Katial highlighted the case of a Hispanic series with English sub titles, a take-off on Narcos, which did well on Netflix, connecting with the audience.

    “This average underdog story with greed, love and lust has reached somewhere, but it may not seem to do well on traditional television in India. But, we have an audience which is willing to experiment,” Katial remarked, adding that though in India there is also a segment of audience that is more confortable with content in their regional language.
    But speaking on segmentation, Katial also said there existed a section of ‘free audience’ on OTT such as FTA in the television space. “The SVoD audience is different from the AVoD audience. The former loves quality content, “he added.

    However, OTT or digital space is not about just fiction — of good quality or otherwise. Sports globally not only are a big attraction, but also revenue earners. And, India too is following that trend, albeit slowly.

    UK-based Perform Group’s Subhayu Roy said it was important to offer content that resonates with the audience. In the west, sports broadcasters did a magazine-kind programming before or after a game giving audiences options such as highlights, best shots at the goal, for example and analysis.

    “One could experiment with that magazine programming thought process in India. With that, one could manage to have a fresh set of audience and break the formula to content creation,” Roy argued.

    Talking about the fiction versus non-fiction, Ram said that they were yet to come up with something that was native to digital, while Shergill felt “non-fiction originals” on OTT had a limited shelf life —like a bursting of a big cracker. But, both of them agreed engagement with the audience was important. `MTV Roadies`’ consumption numbers (on digital) paralleled television and `Big Boss’ too had similar numbers, it was claimed.

    Do digital audiences seek free content or support from brands is critical? While agreeing that brand integration was important, Shergill said, “One needs a revenue model with brand support for the kind of stories that you want to tell. But we have not limited ourselves to that. We have gone ahead and invested in quality content. We did several shows last year and invested in originals pipeline. Now, we are ready with our next slate of shows. If a brand comes on board, it will be good, but quality hasn’t been compromised on.”

    The audience is more open to the idea of subliminal kind of branding as compared to the ‘Paas Paas’’ in-the-face branding, Bindra felt.

    Panelists also agreed that Indians generally struggle with the concept of paying for good — especially original and quality content. “Indians have traditionally struggled with the idea of paying for content. It does not come to them naturally. But, it will eventually happen. One needs to create the kind of content that justifies the kind of subscription they pay,” Bindra explained.

  • Just 11% video viewership is on OTT: Akamai’s Reddy

    MUMBAI: Video viewership is growing at about eight and a half hours a month at present, and is expected to double or triple over the next year. However, 89 per cent of video viewership is on YouTube and Facebook, and only 11 per cent is shared among OTT players in India, according to Akamai Technologies country sales manager Sandeep Reddy.

    Reddy was the keynote speaker at the Vidnet 2017 meet organised by indiantelevision.com. The theme of Vidnet 2017 was: Will Indian OTT/SVOD live up to its promise?

    Revealing more inputs, Reddy said there are 150 million estimated online viewers at a time when the country ‘is in the middle of this revolution’ and this is bound to grow. The current estimate is that 60 to 65 per cent viewers watch online video in 28 Tier-III cities, and deployment is improving but not at the level of Mumbai, Delhi or Bangalore. “There is a challenge of reach,” he said.

    Building a brand, partnership, reach, scale, and economy are the quintessential parameters to make a successful OTT.

    Speaking on OTT and deployment of connectivity, Reddy who has been with Akamai for eleven years, shared his experiences noting that there was deployment only in 25 centres over 15 years.

    While referring to the limitations of traditional broadcasting in TV, he said the turning point would be in 2020 when there would be more online viewership than on traditional broadcast TV. Broadcast TV was headed towards online viewership, he said.

    The rise of affordable Chinese smartphones in India led to cheaper data plans and reduced the entry barrier, he said, and added: “we are talking about buying smartphones and seeing telecommunication providers increasing their deployments. We are observing huge connectivity, huge deployment, and we are seeing the race going up for the state of internet according to the report what we have published. The speed of the internet is about 2 Mbps in India. We are still lagging behind globally but it is growing and there are 40 per cent viewers over 4 Mbps and that is a sweet spot where you can deliver reasonable video and that’s why people are watching for longer hours”, he said. In this context, he referred to the example of Jio which came with low rate data plans.

    Because the number of users was growing, he said there was better connectivity and there were likes of Alt Balaji and Netflix using content specifically made for this audience, resulting in more and more users and that was the opportunity for broadcasters.
    With respect to OTT players, he said there were some key success facts for those sitting on the fence. Referring to a previos speaker who had spoken of how Indians will pay, he said they will pay if the content is appealing and engaging. The Indian population/users was ready to pay and that had been seen from the growth of TV, cable TV, and DTH where the subscription is Rs 600 to Rs 700 per month. “One can watch television when a show is being aired but the internet costs much less and one still gets all the content”, he added.

    There was a lot of scope to make a good business model here, he said, as with traditional broadcast one did not really know, did not really connect, and used it directly. ”When you are online you have the players that are tracking your every activity, you know which videos are being viewed, you know where exactly the users are stopping, you know exactly how to monetize, where to place your ads. So fabulous monetization models are available’, he told broadcasters and distributors.

    Making a point on scale and quality, Reddy said, “We are talking about competing with broadcast television where you have a signal from a tower beaming signal to millions of users. There are no issues, satellites are not strained, but on the internet single user places a load on his system. When you talk about prime time audiences you are talking about India vs Pakistan match at 7pm on Internet. The whole nation is tuned in and so that is a load on the system and there is a challenge one has to deal. Similarly you can offset the system as VOD users are watching at their convenience”.

    When competing with TV broadcasters, “Internet works just on the box, the video is clear, it plays perfectly well and it is not so simple as you cannot click on a video, and it needs to play perfectly otherwise it is going to lose the user”. He added that In the United States, “we are seeing about less than 1 second startup time of the video and the estimate is that if the startup time is 3 seconds you are going to lose the audience and we want to be sure that startup time is good. In India we are lagging behind America and Europe. We have got less than 4-5 per cent rebuffer or more than five per cent for our views delivered. So quality, reach, and economy are the factors impacting the success in OTT.”

    Hotstar is leading the revolution, he said. They took the plunge and they invested the big bucks, they went out and bought rights for undisclosed amount. The streaming content provider ALT produces its own shows. Sun TV launched its ‘SunNxt’ app a month ago growing some phenomenal numbers,

    “The message I want you to leave with is content, which needs to be unique and engaging. Content is king is a cliché but it is true. It is about the brand right now. Anybody in the screen, anybody in the train can watch and their choice is Hotstar. That is the brand proposition they have built.”

  • Reliance Industries buys Balaji Telefilms stake for Rs 4.13 bn

    MUMBAI: The Board of Directors of Balaji Telefilms Limited, in its meeting held on Thursday, considered and approved an investment by Reliance Industries Limited, one of India’s leading corporates, through a preferential issue of 25.2 million equity shares at Rs 164 each, aggregating to Rs 4.13 billion, subject to necessary shareholder and other approvals. Axis Capital Limited acted as the sole investment banker for this transaction.

    Balaji is India’s leading entertainment content producer operating across television, movie and digital platforms. The company recently launched ALTBalaji, a multi-device subscription video on demand platform, which offers original, premium and exclusive content for a global digital audience and in a short span, post its launch, has garnered over four million downloads across 80 countries.

    This transaction marks a landmark event for the Indian OTT industry and is expected to further accelerate the growing trend of media consumption ‘on-the-go’. The proceeds from the transaction would be utilized to further speed up content development initiatives, especially for ALT, thereby providing it with a strong ability to compete with other OTT service providers- both global and Indian.

    Balaji chairman Jeetendra Kapoor said, “We welcome Reliance as a partner in our growth journey towards becoming the preferred content producer for the Indian diaspora across all means of video consumption and across all geographies. This investment is a vote of confidence to the Company’s strategic move to own our IP and our viewers.”

    Earlier, Jio and Zee Entertainment reportedly denied reports of being offered to buy a stake in ALTBalaji. Balaji was planning to sell up to 26 per cent stake in its subsidiary ALTBalaji Digital and reportedly in talks with the media companies. Launched in mid-April ALTBalaji has 250 plus hours of programming.

  • Paywizard’s Vaguine joins Ownzones as SVP, to elevate European presence

    MUMBAI: Continuing its expansion throughout Western and Eastern Europe, Ownzones Media Network, the OTT EntTech company, has named Serge Vaguine as Senior Vice President, Business Development.  Vaguine will be based in London. The announcement was made today by Douglas Lee, Head of Programming at Ownzones.

    In this newly created post, Vaguine takes on the responsibility of increasing the company’s worldwide distribution platform services and technology offerings. This includes Ownzones’ OTT video delivery platform, which provides end-to-end solutions for delivering world-class viewing experiences. On the content front, Vaguine will handle the distribution for 420TV, a new VOD “all things cannabis” channel featuring 4K original, multi-episodic series’, long and short form news, informational and entertainment content, as well as Ownzones Passport, a localized app that gives consumers access to original video programs with top international and local influencers and Hollywood movies.

    “Our goal is to gain a foothold in more established European markets, and Serge is a results-driven senior sales and business development executive with a proven track record,” said Lee.  “Given his significant global experience in selling complex software and his deep background in digital media and entertainment, he is the perfect choice to lead us both in the content and technology sales efforts.”

    Previously, Vaguine served as Vice President Sales at Paywizard Group, a provider of subscriber management and billing solutions for pay TV operators. Vaguine undertook the task of boosting subscriber acquisition and retention as well as providing predictive churn analytics and rich data insight to the firm’s clients, including BT Sports, BoxNation, NBCU and ITV.

    From 2006 to 2014, Vaguine served as Director of Business Development, EMEA at Amino Communications, the leading provider of innovative hybrid TV, IPTV and cloud TV solutions and was based in Cambridge during his nine-year tenure with the company.

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