MUMBAI: The year was 2006 and the word streaming hadn’t yet become synonymous with digital video. It was then that YuppTV started its journey in the online video ecosystem when over-the-top platforms were not a buzzword. The concept of streaming services was alien to most parts of the world, especially India, at that time. Hence, YuppTV was focused on showing Indian content in international markets. As the tide has turned in the last few years, Yupp TV is also relooking at India, one of the most lucrative markets for streaming platforms currently.
“We are rightly positioned now to get back in the Indian market and there are need gaps here. Yupp TV is very uniquely positioned to fill that and there are not many players in the market to do that right now,” YuppTV and YuppMaster founder and CEO Uday Reddy tells Indiantelevision.com in an interaction.
YuppTV is currently working on a product for India which has been slightly delayed due to the ongoing lockdown. Reddy promises to come up with a “very disruptive product” in collaboration with some of his partners.
The streaming service has recently ventured into the ed-tech space with a platform called YuppMaster. The platform has brought together top-notch faculty with experiences ranging between 10-25 years in mentoring students and live streaming technology to provide the best online education to students.
“We have rock-solid technology and we have an excellent reach. We thought we understand education better and in terms of what is needed and how to deliver it, using technology. So that's why we launched and in this country, there is a huge gap of top-quality coaching centres in tier II, tier III, tier IV cities,” Reddy shares the rationale of the new venture.
Although the platform is currently offering free content till the lockdown is over, it will move to pure-play subscription service after that. The pricing will range between Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 per year which is marginal compared to the Rs 2-3 lakh students pay for coaching classes. Moreover, Reddy also adds that education needs to be democratised given the lower per capita income in the country.
When one mentions OTT, it is generally restricted to entertainment but Reddy says that it is much more than that. Additionally, while there is a high dependency over other content creators in the entertainment space, Reddy says that in the education space, they can create own content easily.
The timing of YuppTV’s ed-tech platform launch collided with the COVID-19 crisis and so; the engagement for the overall app has gone up from existing subscribers. But as call centres malfunctioned due to lockdown across countries, the sales have been impacted in the international arena.
“I think in the last couple of years there's been a lot of education in the Indian market. There's also learning for the consumers and content provider. So, there is much more maturity right now. And we have not missed our boat,” Reddy states.
“We will be a tech-driven aggregator platform. We will try and make an easy delivery platform for consumers. We have been the leaders and we still have the large original South content, but we realise that there are a lot of good production companies, that's their DNA. And we will focus as a tech player to facilitate the delivery of content,” he said about YuppTV’s venture into original content.
The upcoming product of YuppTV will be subscription-based and focused on pan-India rather than just the South market. It will be partnering with the same big broadcast content providers for the “extension of its international business.”
