Category: Over The Top Services

  • How is OTT redefining media: CASBAA announces summit in Singapore

    MUMBAI: CASBAA, the Association for digital multichannel TV, content, platforms, advertising and video delivery in Asia, has announced its 4th OTT Summit, Asia’s OTT industry marquee annual event. A series of panels comprising the region’s leading experts will explore in detail how traditional media is responding to the digital challenges of OTT.

    “We are delighted to be returning to Singapore for the fourth edition of CASBAA’s OTT Summit,” said CASBAA CEO Christopher Slaughter. “While traditional media incumbents remain dominant, there’s no denying the growing impact of over-the-top (OTT) video services, and how they are transforming viewing habits throughout the region. We have been saying it for years, but it’s now increasingly apparent that OTT is truly a big part of pay TV’s future.”

    The spectacular success, both critical and commercial, of such diverse video platforms as Netflix, Hooq and Spuul have established OTT services as real competitors to mainstream broadcasters. According to a survey by BCG, OTT services are growing by more than 20 per cent annually and winning share over traditional TV.1 Traditional media must respond fast to this existential crisis.

    The real challenge for incumbents is how to rethink their business strategies in light of such drastic industry transformation. Are legacy business models holding traditional media back as they contemplate the OTT challenge?

    CASBAA has convened a select field of industry thought leaders, senior executives and market practitioners, including:

    Ajit Mohan, CEO Hotstar
    AravindVenugopal, VP – Media Partners Asia
    Winradit Kolasastraseni, SVP Innovation – Discovery Networks Asia Pacific
    Simon Vella, Head of Asia, MPP Global
    Oliver Wilkinson, MD, PwC
    Alan Soon, Founder & CEO, Splice Newsroom
    Shad Hashmi, VP – Digital Development, Global Markets &Operations Asia,BBC Worldwide
    Lam Swee Kim, CMO, Dimsum& Star Online Malaysia
    PremKamath, Deputy MD, A+E Networks Asia
    Alexandre Muller, MD APAC, TV5MONDE
    Jonas Engwall, CEO, RTL CBS Asia
    Virat Patel, MD, Pioneer Consulting
    Monica Bhatia, Regional Digital Director, APAC, Maxus
    Genny Yang, Group Account Director, Kantar Milward Brown
    David Schonfeld, Director Technical Operations, A+E Networks Asia
    Alex Merwin, VP International, SpotX
    Luke Gaydon, VP of OTT Solutions, Brightcove
    Yu-Chuang Kuek, Managing Director APAC, Netflix
    Ravi Vora, CMO, Hooq
    S Mohan, Co-Founder & COO, Spuul
    Lindsay Servian, Head of ONTAPtv.com, PCCW Global
    Maya Hari, MD –SEA & India, Twitter
    Tim Martin, CEO RugbyPass
    Michael Greco, VP APAC,Vindicia
    CK Lee, VP, Sports Business – Content Group, ASTRO
    Unmish Parthasarathi, Head of Digital Sales, International Cricket Council & Founder, Picture Board
    Craig Johnson, MD Media, SEA & India, Nielsen
    Priya Khatri, GM Sales & Business Development, SEA Eyeota
    Jay Shah, CEO, OpenDNA
    James Miner, CEO, Miner Labs
    Roger Harvey, Regional Director, Irdeto
    Mike Kerr, MD Asia, BEIN
    Joe Welch, SVP Government Relations APAC, 21st Century Fox
    HianGoh, Partner, NSI Ventures
    Yinglan Tan, Venture Partner, Sequoia
    Marcel Fenez, President, Fenez Media

    The industry’s essential platform to explore how OTT is transforming the broadcasting landscape, the CASBAA OTT Summit 2017 will take a deep dive on a range of topics, includingtrends in Asian viewership, whether OTT is a game changer in sports, how traditional media is adapting, the synergy between OTT and multiscreen, and how to use data as metrics for success.

    The CASBAA OTT Summit 2017 has been recommended for all those involved at the senior level in media and broadcasting, from content providers and broadcasters to investors and regulators.

    CASBAA OTT Summit 2017 is supported by the presenting sponsor Brightcove, and sponsors including Adobe, Diagnal, Irdeto, Mediamorph, MPP Global, PCCW Global and Vindicia.

  • Culture Machine reorganises sales team

    MUMBAI: Digital media network Culture Machine has reorganised its sales team. Siddharth Narula, who served as the president – revenue, has been promoted to chief revenue officer. He will overlook the expansion of the firm’s technology sales footprint in international markets, starting with South East Asia and North America. He will continue to report to Culture Machine CEO and co-founder Sameer Pitalwalla.

    Aditya Aima has joined as the business head – ASEAN for Culture Machine, operating out of Malaysia. Aima will overlook the expansion of Culture Machine’s Intelligence Machine and Video Machine offerings to its brand and advertisers. Minal Sharma has joined as the national sales head, overlooking all sales for Culture Machine’s Studios and media brands. She joins the team with over 16 years of experience across leading media and entertainment brands.

    Both, Aima and Sharma will report to Narula.

    Pitalwalla said, “Our Indian media brands lead the charts in each of their verticals, and the core technology platforms that have helped scale them are already in use by Fortune 500 clients globally, with large demand the world over. We are excited about growing this opportunity, while continuing to focus on our domestic Media business.”

    Narula added, “2016 has been one of the most active years for Culture Machine in terms of revenue escalation and content creation. We created trendsetting videos which have led to hundreds of global and local brands to collaborate with us, resulting in award winning campaigns. In the embryonic days of digital entertainment and technology, the addition of Minal and Aditya will help catalyse the process.”

    Since its inception, Culture Machine’s vision of using technology and storytelling to build great media brands that people love has led the way in the digital content revolution that the country is currently witnessing. Culture Machine’s digital brands Being Indian, Blush, Put Chutney, Viva and Awesome Sauce have carved a distinctive identity and an undisputed space among the top three in their respective genres.

  • Eros Now partners SpeedPay, bundled with BSNL

    MUMBAI: Over-the-top (OTT) Bollywood entertainment platform Eros Now has partnered with SpeedPay, a multi-purpose offline wallet and Indian state owned telecommunications provider, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL). With these partnerships, the OTT platform will now be bundled across all the existing and new data pack users of the telco provider.

    The tie-up also enables Eros Now’ premium content including old and new Bollywood movies, music videos, TV shows, originals, etc available to the data pack users.

    Eros International president business development Kumar Ahuja is extremely hopeful about the two strategic partnerships. He believes that this tie up will boast their customer base across non-metros and tier 2 cities. Associating with SpeedPay will reaffirm the platform’s philosophy and will provide premium and unparalleled entertainment services on the go.

    The partnership further strengthens Eros Now’s presence across BSNL’s SpeedPay outlets.

    Pyro CEO Paritosh Reddy expects the partnership to enhance their customer experience and hopes that it will make the unbanked sector enjoy the benefits of OTT service. For them, this alliance clearly brings more business looking at the subscribers of the digital video streaming platform.

    SpeedPay is a multi-purpose offline wallet that is used to purchase various service on-mobile from affiliated merchants based on ‘anywhere-anytime’ concept and provide safety and convenience for the customer. It claims to have approximately 1.2 million unique visitors transacting every month in the Middle East, and approximately 4 million transactions per day in India.

    Eros Now will be able reach out to a large database of over 1.3 million retailers and approximately over 2 million unique users in India through SpeedPay.

    Also Read:

    Eros Now partners Paytm, Mobikwik & Freecharge

    Eros Now to premiere original series ‘Salute Siachen’ on 15 Jan

    Eros International raises $30 million for Eros Now

  • Arré premieres ‘The Adventures Of Abbaas Mastan’ on Facebook

    MUMBAI: Arre is all set to take the viewers to the wildly fictionalised world of two film students on one global mission – to make the world’s most viral video. The Adventures Of Abbaas Mastan is a first-of-its-kind format, presented in the new universal language of gibberish where the entire cast of characters speak absolute nonsense while still making perfect sense.

    Led entirely by subtitles, the series is a unique, language-agnostic show that can adapt itself to any expression without getting lost in translation. Currently featuring English subtitles, the show will soon be available in Hindi and other languages.

    Arré founder B. Saikumar said, “The original idea behind the show was to do a humourous takedown of two of the world’s most pressing issues – terrorism and obsession with internet fame. With ‘The Adventures of Abbaas Mastan’, we’ve tried a whole new format based on gibberish-speak. The series captures the attempt of these blundering, well-meaning film buffs, who attempt to make a viral video in captivity.”

    Abbaas and Mastan, fresh out of film school and die-hard fans of Karan Johar and Quentin Tarantino, are being held by a terrorist organisation to deliver 3 million views on a video. They try to channel the art of their masters as they plan the world’s most viral video… the beheading of a gora kaafir.

    The show is a comedy of errors with two peaceable and lovable idiots at the centre, who are trying to find their way to Internet fame and remain true to their filmmaking idols in Hollywood and Bollywood… all the while desperately trying to avoid the actual beheading. Bhuvan Arora and Vyom Sharma win hearts with their portrayals of the peace-loving Abbaas and Mastan who are familiar with only one kind of shooting – the type that happens with a camera.

    “When people come across posts and videos on Facebook that strongly resonate with them, they further share it with their friends. Good topical humour definitely strikes a chord with most and is a great conversation starter. We are excited to see how the Arré community on Facebook has built itself so strongly as a premium content destination with refreshing humorous content of a social nature. We wish them the very best for this series!” added FB India strategic partnership development -entertainment Biswamitra.

    Season one of The Adventures Of Abbaas Mastan consists of four chapters and two episodes are live now.

  • One Digital launches ‘Hip Hop Highway’ on Saavn

    MUMBAI: In an effort to amplify its efforts in catapulting India’s burgeoning hip hop story, Saavn and One Digital have launched their new audio show, Hip Hop Highway. The show will have 12 episodes, releasing a 25 to 30 minute episode each Wednesday starting from today.

    Listeners will hear from Indian artists, promoters, labels, producers, and upcoming talent as they discuss all aspects of the hip hop genre. Mixing in-studio sessions and on-site interviews, listeners can expect an authentic, off-the-cuff conversation on the role desi hip hop has come to play in India’s popular culture.

    “With Hip Hop Highway we want to trace the origins of the genre in the country, with artists relating their journeys to the top. What was once deemed a subculture has today successfully become mainstream Indian music and Saavn is delighted to be the first audio streaming service to tell this story,” said Saavn co-founder and executive chairman Paramdeep Singh. “Hip Hop Highway will be incredibly artist centric and give major up-and-coming talent the opportunity to share their craft and stories with Saavn’s growing listenership base. Considering One Digital Entertainment’s extensive work on the hip hop scene, we are happy to partner them on this property”.

    Hosted by Raaj Jones, the first episode will feature Indian rapper Raftaar and British-Indian DJ & Radio presenter Bobby Friction.

    With Hip Hop Highway, listeners will be privy to a range of conversations, from insights into the evolution of desi hip hop to the international scene, and exclusive unreleased tracks to live performances from their favourite hip hop artists. Week on week, the off-centre yet revolutionary audio show will have various artists including Badshah, Divine and Naezy, among others.

    One Digital Entertainment co-founder and COO Gurpreet Singh Bhasin added, “This audio show is novel in more ways than one. Not only is it the first show dedicated to a specific music genre, it is also a step forward in strengthening the original audio content domain in the country. We are delighted to collaborate with Saavn on this as they make for one of the perfect partners, with them being the people behind the best audio entertainment in the industry”.

    Unlike other global markets, India’s uniquely film-centric music scene leaves independent artists with little support and limited opportunities to access larger audiences. As part of their larger objective, Saavn teams up with One Digital Entertainment to access the alternative mediums in which desi hip hop artists often make their debut. Choosing to showcase the lives and artistry of India’s hip hop legends is an unconventional method that has worked extremely well for Saavn in the recent past, with programs like AiR (Artists in Residence) and RMX giving non-film musicians both the tools and the global stage required to grow their fan base independent of the Bollywood music scene.

    Saavn launched Saavn Originals in April 2016 in a bid to expand their repertoire of content to include a cutting-edge collection of original, long-form audio programs for its worldwide user base.

  • Eros International Plc reports massive bottomline gains for third quarter

    BENGALURU: Eros International Plc (Eros) reported more than a 15 fold (15.4  fold) increase in operating profits for the quarter ended 31 December 2016 (Q3-17, current quarter) as compared to corresponding year ago quarter. Operating profit in the current quarter was $8.2 million as compared to just $0.5 million in Q3-16. The company reported Net Income of $11.5 million as compared to a loss of $2.5 million in the corresponding year ago quarter.

    The company’s topline (revenues) however declined 5.3 percent year-over-year to $57.3 million in the current quarter from $60.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA in Q3-17 increased by 62.9 percent to $14.5 million, compared to $8.9 million in the prior year period.

    Eros explains that the strong increase in margins and profitability vis-à-vis the slight decline in revenues was due to the negative impact of demonetisation on theatrical revenues in the third quarter partially offset by strong high-margin catalogue sales.

    Company speak

    Eros managing director and group CEO Jyoti Deshpande said, “I am very proud of the progress we have made over the past few months on our journey to transform our Company into a leading global digital distribution business supported by the power of our brand, premium content and unparalleled distribution capabilities. The momentum we highlighted in November continues to accelerate with the growing success of Eros Now, our OTT platform which reached 58 million registered users and crossed 2 million paying subscribers in December 2016.

    As we discussed in our Q2 results last November, the rapidly evolving digital media landscape in India including increased competition from Western OTT players for digital rights has underscored the value of digital content in India. It also reinforces our overall strategy to focus on premium content with the widest possible appeal. In the long term the rising value of digital rights will make our existing content library more valuable and increase the demand for our new release digital content across all platforms – including satellite and cable.

    The demonetisation efforts undertaken by the Indian Government in November have clearly had a short-term impact on many aspects of the Indian economy, especially consumer discretionary spending. To that end while the entire media sector in India has been temporarily impacted by these measures, we feel that the underlying push to digitisation will directly and indirectly benefit our company going forward in many ways. We have been working tirelessly to provide consumers with multiple payment options for Eros Now, from telco billing to digital wallets to mobile payment providers. The push to digitisation reinforces our strategy and we feel we are well positioned to capitalize on this opportunity.

    Finally, our strong upcoming production slate of over 50 films has gone through a stringent green-lighting process for several months. The upcoming lineup includes highly promising projects including five films from Trinity, two Indo‐China co‐productions, a Shah Rukh Khan film from Color Yellow, two sequels from our own content stable like Vicky Donor-2, Badlapur-2, Munna Michael starring Tiger Shroff and Chanda Mama Door Ke starring Sushant Singh, amongst others.”

    ErosNow

    The company says that Eros International’s OTT Platform ErosNow has over 20 lakh (2 million) subscribers worldwide, it has 5.8 crore (58 million) registered users worldwide across WAPP, APP and the web. The platform has rights to over 5,000 films, 250,000 audio tracks with 13 music labels providing music content.

    The company says that Eros Now has integration deals around the world with over 20 different telecom operators and nine different OEMs and connected devices. Further, over the past four months Eros Now has digitally premiered more than 15 films from the Eros International new release slate. Eros Now’s original content offering began with the release of ‘Salute Siachen’, India’s first ever celebrity high endurance expedition to the Siachen Glacier. In addition, Eros Now originals such as Flesh by Siddharth Anand, Smoke and Side Hero will be launched in FY-18.

     

  • Exponential OTT growth: Shemaroo inks licensing deal with Viu

    MUMBAI: Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd, one of the leading content houses in the country, has inked a content licensing deal with Vuclip’s premium OTT video on demand service, Viu.

    Through this deal, Shemaroo Entertainment’s catalogue of contemporary full length Hindi movies like Sarkar, Black, Ishqiya, Traffic Signal, Bheja Fry 2, and The Dirty Picture can be enjoyed by subscribers of Viu which can be accessed from www.viu.com or by downloading Viu’s Android and iOS apps.

    Shemaroo director Jai Maroo said, “OTT services are growing exponentially in India. Given the dynamics of the OTT space, content has become the key driver for subscriber acquisition and growth. We are pleased to join hands with Vuclip’s premium OTT video on demand service. Viu in our ongoing efforts to reach out to the digital consumer.”

    Commenting on the partnership, Vuclip India head Vishal Maheshwari said, “Our subscribers see great value in content that is high in quality and freshness. Our content partnership with Shemaroo plays a part in delivering this value to our highly engaged viewers.”

    Shemaroo Entertainment is an established Filmed Entertainment “Content House” in the country, active in Content Ownership, Creation, Aggregation and Distribution with a large content library of over 3000 titles. Shemaroo is engaged in the distribution of content for satellite channels, physical formats and emerging digital technologies like the Mobile, Internet, Broadband, IPTV and DTH among others. Vuclip, a PCCW Media Company, is a leading premium video-on-demand service for emerging markets with 10 million subscribers per quarter. The company’s premium OTT service Viu is currently enjoyed by consumers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt and India.

    Also Read:

    http://www.indiantelevision.com/cable-tv/multi-system-operators/premium-vas-shemaroo-hathway-tie-up-170216

    http://www.indiantelevision.com/dth/dth-services/powered-by-shemaroo-ptc-videocon-d2h-adds-two-vas-services-170117

  • Hooq adds Prestige, Zodiac & Village to its offering

    MUMBAI: The 89 Annual Oscar awards are scheduled to happen later this month on the 24 February. As we gear to watch the awards where films with excellent content are nominated every year, Hooq has added new movie titles to its existing content base. The new titles include renowned names such as The Prestige, Dirty Pretty Things, There will be Blood, Zodiac, Inside Jobs, The Village, The English Patient amongst others.

    Hooq India MD Salil Kapoor said, “Oscars being the most prestigious awards in the history of the film industry automatically becomes a benchmark for the best curated content of all time. As a platform which offers video on demand service, we want to give our customers the best and the most exciting content from across the world and genres. We are very happy to announce the addition of new Oscar titles to our existing base. Hooq has one of the largest number of titles and we are very excited to continuously add more content every month. With varied content on our platform, we aim to offer our audiences different flavors with an uninterrupted viewing experience. To propagate our efforts further, we have multiple partnerships in place, to give a few examples, the Hooq complimentary trials are available for postpaid customers of Airtel, Vodafone and ACT Fiber net. These partnerships will help consumer experience the freedom of viewing content anytime, anywhere with Hooq and give them a window to what we have to offer.”

    The Prestige- is a mystery thriller drama film directed by Christopher Nolan, from a screenplay adapted by Nolan and his brother Jonathan from Christopher Priest’s 1995 World Fantasy Award-winning novel of the same name. The story follows Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, rival stage magicians in London at the end of the 19th century. Obsessed with creating the best stage illusion, they engage in competitive one-upmanship with tragic results.The film had 34 nominations and five wins in the Academy Awards.

    Dirty Pretty Things- is a British drama film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Steven Knight, a drama about two immigrants in London. The film had 19 nominations and 5 wins in the Academy Awards 2004.

    There Will Be Blood- is a American epic historical drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. The film was inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil! It tells the story of a silver miner-turned-oilman (Day-Lewis) on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The film had around 80 nominations with 70 wins out of them.

    Zodiac- is an American mystery-thriller film directed by David Fincher. Zodiac tells the story of the manhunt for a notorious serial killer who called himself the “Zodiac” and killed in and around the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, leaving several victims in his wake and taunting police with letters, blood stained clothing, and ciphers mailed to newspapers. The cases remain one of Northern California’s most infamous unsolved crimes. The film had 30 nominations with 10 wins out of them.

    Inside Job- is a documentary film, directed by Charles H. Ferguson, about the late-2000s financial crisis. The film is about “the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption”. In five parts, the film explores how changes in the policy environment and banking practices helped create the financial crisis.Inside Job was acclaimed by film critics, who praised its pacing, research, and exposition of complex material. The film was screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in May and won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

    The Village- is an American psychological thriller film, written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, and Sigourney Weaver. The film is about a village whose inhabitants live in fear of creatures inhabiting the woods beyond it. Like other films written and directed by Shyamalan from the same time period, The Village has a twist ending.The film received mixed reviews, with critics especially divided about the plausibility and payoff of the ending. The film gave composer James Newton Howard his fourth Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. The film had 11 nominations with 5 wins out of them.

    The English Patient is a British-American romantic drama film directed by Anthony Minghella from his own script based on the novel of the same name by Michael Ondaatje and produced by Saul Zaentz. In the final days of the Italian Campaign of World War II, Hana, a French-Canadian nurse working and living in a bombed-out Italian monastery, looks after a critically burned man who speaks English but cannot remember his name. They are joined by Kip, a Sikhsapper in the British Army who defuses bombs and has a love affair with Hana before leaving. The film was released to critical acclaim, and received 12 nominations at the 69th Academy Awards, eventually winning nine, including Best Picture, Best Director for Minghella and Best Supporting Actress for Juliette Binoche.

  • YuppTV-ETV partner exclusively for Telugu channels for US market

    MUMBAI: Clearly this is going to be something that’s going to work in its favour. The Emerald Media funded-UdayReddy run (over the top/video on demand) OTT/VOD service YuppTV has signed an exclusive partnership with the Ramoji Rao-promoted K. Bapineedu-run ETV Network to stream  ETV Telugu’s entertainment content in  the US market. Viewers in Uncle Sam will get to see ETV Telugu shows like Padutha Teeyaga, Jabardasth, Extra Jabadasth and Manasu Mamatha exclusively on YuppTV.

    YuppTV’s target audience is the south Asian diaspora globally and a substantial portion of the hardware and software engineers working in the US are from either Andhra Pradesh or Telangana. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for example was born to Telugu speaking parents. An estimate is that around 250,000 Indians working the US speak Telugu. And more than 2 million Telugu speaking Indians are dispersed the world over.

    ETV is also introducing introducing ETV Life, ETV Plus, ETV Cinema and ETV Abhiruchi for the first time in the US. As part of the association, fans of ETV shall be able to access their Telugu shows on the YuppTV app available on six screens including smart TVs/blu-ray players, smart media players, PC, smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles.

    “ETV Telugu’s entertainment content has been successful in striking the right chord with the users and we are happy to make the same available in the US markets, henceforth exclusively,” says YuppTV founder & CEO Uday Reddy. “We further look forward to a long term association with channels and would always strive to surprise our users with further such engaging and entertaining associations.”

    ETV Network CEO K Bapineedu adds: “We have enjoyed our association with YuppTV for a while now. The decision to go exclusive on our partnership with the platform was taken due to the positive response, especially in the US market. Our entertainment shows have become popular over the time in the Indian expat community settled in the US. We further look forward to enhancing the reach of our entertainment content via the incredible penetration and popularity of YuppTV.”

    YuppTV has 25,000 hours of entertainment content catalogued in its library, while nearly 2500 hours of new on-demand content is added to the YuppTV platform every day It offers live TV and catch-Up TV technology. It  recently launched YuppFlix, a movie on-demand streaming service for the expat market, and YuppTV Bazaar, an online marketplace for the premium content curator.

    YuppTV is currently ranked #1 Internet Pay TV platform for Indians living abroad and also the largest internet TV platform from premium content availability in India. YuppTV is the most downloaded Indian SmartTV app and it also boasts of eight million mobile downloads with 4.0 user rating.

    Subscribers in India pay Rs 5 for a day pass or Rs 99 for a month’s pass to watch all of YuppTV’s content. US-based subscribers pay $15.99 monthly for a Telugu Gold Value Pack, $99.99 for a half yearly pack and $169.99 for an annual pack. It charges $29.99 per month for a Telugu Platinum Value Pack.

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  • ALT Balaji to go live on 21 Feb, commercial launch on 15 April

    MUMBAI: For Ekta Kapoor, Sameer Nair, and the entire team at Balaji Telefilms D-Day has finally dawned. 21 Februrary 2017 is the day when its latest diversification ALT Balaji which has been talked about for so long will finally launch.

    Speaking to ET Now, CEO Sameer Nair said that the video on demand (VOD) platform will be rolled out to consumers as a free service to sample and snack in the first phase.

    “It’s going  tech live on 21 February,” he said. “We are testing the technology for the first month. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. We will be testing whether it plays out well. You put it off, you put it on. Does it work well? Are all the features performing as well as expected?”

    He added that post this testing phase, the commercial launch has currently been slated for 15 April .

    Pricing he revealed has been kept super disruptive. “Netflix has a tag of Rs 600 a month, ours will be at Rs 60,” he explained.

    Nair pointed out that ALT Balaji is aiming for the 25 million cable and satellite audiences (of the total of 165 million Indian C&S homes) which are lapsing from Naagin kind of content.

    “There is this giant world which between Narcos (on Netflix) and Naagin which is what we are going after,” he said. “The premium subscription homes. These 25 million folks are spending between Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 a month for telephony, television and entertainment. They will be spending Rs 600 more a month more in the next five years. That’s a $3 billion market. “

    According to Nair, Bollywood has been pushing the envelope with its eye on this audience. “It produces a Sultan and a Dangal and it also makes  a Pink, Kapoor & Sons and also makes Neerja. Television has not done that, and  it remains currently in the giant mass base. And therein lies the opportunity.”

    At commercial launch, ALT will showcase about 60-80 hours of content; the target is to finally have 300 hours for users to binge on.  He revealed that Balaji Telefims  will be making 30 per cent of those shows for ALT Balaji  while the remainder have been farmed out to outside producers. Each series will be between 12-15 episodes, with each episode being between 12-15 -18 to 22 minutes long.

    “Users will get to watch the first two to five episodes free,” he highlighted. “And if you like what you have seen, you will have to pay us a little bit of money. That is Rs 60 a month.”

    Nair also revealed that the ALT  business model has three years of losses written in to build its audience base and turn in profits.

    “Our focus is on the digital platform because it is going to build a genuine B2C business for us. It will be a consistent business.  Our costs are consistent for content whether we have a million subscribers or 10 million on ALT. So it can be from Rs 400 crore to RS 4,000 crore depending on how we scale up.  Films show  a wobble. TV is our core business and it continues. However, it is getting commoditised and we will continue to produce TV shows whether for DD or private satellite channels. But digital has the potential to be a game changer. It is our big play.”

    Nair also took an indirect dig at the oodles of money that is being used to create content by those rushing into the video on demand segment. “There’s a lot of noise about the big players, the broadcasters. And all the money that is going to be spent,” he explained. “ But we all know that the amount of money spent is not equal to how good a story is. You can spend a billion dollars to make something; you can spend a billion dollars to make a turkey.  We at Balaji are really focused on the story telling.  And that’s where our advantage lies.”

    Also Read :

    Alt Balaji ropes in Manav Sethi as CMO

    Ekta ties up with Lemon Advisors for Alt Balaji global launch

    Balaji to invest Rs 200 cr in ALT, launch in Jan ’17