Device, access & connectivity driving OTT growth in India: Neeraj Roy

Hungama, one of India’s largest digital media entertainment companies, recently announced its foray into long-form original programming with a multi-genre bouquet of 4 originals – ‘Damaged’, ‘Hankaar’, ‘Bar Code’ and ‘Boys with Toys’. These 4 shows will be launched over the next 3 months, with the first one, ‘Damaged’, premiering on June 6, 2018 on Hungama Play. While the initial 4 shows would be in Hindi, Hungama also plans to create original content in other major Indian languages. 

Hungama’s association with Xiaomi will enable consumers to watch the shows via Hungama Play on Mi Video and Mi TV. In addition to this, users will be able to stream the shows through Hungama Play on Vodafone Play, Idea Movies & TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick and other Android TVs. 

A psychological crime drama, ‘Damaged’ is about a female serial killer and has Amruta Khanvilkar essaying the role. The show is directed by Aarambhh Mohan Singh and produced by Alligator Media Productions. 

‘Hankaar’ is a crime drama, while ‘Bar Code’ is about the uber-elite and is set against the backdrop of Mumbai’s buzzing nightlife. ‘Boys with Toys’ is a hilarious take on the lives of two young men, whose lives go into a complete flip when one of them receives an unusual inheritance – a box full of sex toys. 

Hungama today is present across music, movies, video and games, catering to the world’s fastest growing mobile market – India, and South Asians in over 70 countries worldwide. In the last 10-12 years, Hungama has served mobile entertainment to over 300 million consumers. 

Hungama Play is India’s largest movie platform and has over 6,500 Bollywood, Hollywood and Indian regional movies available in both HD and SD. The Hungama service is accessible across all the smart devices. Hungama Music offers subscribers an array of music and music videos across languages and genres for streaming and downloading with its unique gamification layer. Hungama also owns and runs the largest Bollywood news portal – BollywoodHungama.com and the largest platform for independent artistes in India – Artist Aloud. 

In an interaction with Adgully, Neeraj Roy, Managing Director and CEO, Hungama Digital Media, speaks about the strategy behind introducing long-form original content, evolution in the OTT space in India, growing competition and more. Excerpts: 

What are the opportunities that you envisage with the latest fortification?
With Hungama, we have an active community across the music and video platforms. About a year back, we embarked on this journey of identifying the gap in terms of storytelling between television and digital, where we have seen that in the last 12-18 months, the adoption of digital as a medium has been very rapid. 

Currently, we have completed 4 original shows, out of which one is a crime thriller, two are drama series and one is a humour series. The idea is to mount them in a right way, and for that you have to know your audience whom you can target with your stories. With Hungama, the advantage is that we already have 50 million monthly active users, besides with Hungama Play, the shows will also get telecast on Vodafone, Idea and Xiaomi. Thus, there will be a fairly large group of people who can watch our content. The idea is to have greater viewer engagement. We want our characters to resonate with our viewers so that they can build an affinity towards them. 

How has the content in the OTT space evolved over the years?
There are two factors that are driving the growth of OTT. First is device and second is access & connectivity. If you look at the last 5 years, not just India, but countries all over the world are getting into a ubiquitous device ecosystem. There are well over 150 million smartphone users in India and growing. In the television space, we have seen the evolution of smart TVs in last 2-3 years, which means that we are no longer restricted to the content which we are getting through our set up box or cable connection, today we can get the content on the web or an app. 

The second thing which is driving this growth is access or connectivity. In the last 18-24 months, we have seen the entry of smart devices that allow us to watch content without worrying about the data price. 

The other aspect which comes in place now is what kind of stories you are looking at. On a digital platform, it is important for us to understand our audience and what they’re actually viewing. Hungama has served over 300 million consumers in the last 12 years across languages. We have worked with over 400 content creators. We have an understanding across 19 different languages in terms of the narratives and the culture. Lastly, we have also tried doing some kind of demographic profiling because the video consumer in the Indian Internet market still has a skew towards the male audience. Google released a report a couple of months back, which talks about similar findings. If you look at the content in the television space, you will find similar type of stories being narrated across networks. Thus, we thought of starting out with differentiated content like ‘Damaged’. 

What are the genres that are getting more traction on OTT?
In the entertainment genre, the first thing which has virality is humour, and that’s why we are seeing the growth of stand up comedy as a genre. We see shows which are centered around ‘Friends’ like concept, but with a strong overdose of humour. 

As a form factor, drama has always been a very prominent genre. We also felt that crime as a genre has not been explored well. Romance and thrillers have always been a big hit with the viewers. We have to balance the content with the maturity of the particular platform, the taste of the audience and many such factors, because in today’s time your audience has limitless amount of variety and power. 

Also, we feel that language and cultural sensitivity have become the first draw and that’s what we are hoping to address. In our next set of creatives, you will also see that coming out of the regional and vernacular language productions that we will do. 

What are your regional expansion plans?
If you look at Indian cinema, almost 34 per cent is made up of the 4 Southern languages. As a company, we have dealt with 400 partners in diverse markets, diverse languages and diverse cultures. We will leverage this relationship now to give them a different form of platform. 

Given the growing competition in the market, what is the newness that Hungama is brining for the audience?
Today, there are 900 TV channels in India; the country produces about 1,400 films each year in at least 17 languages, and if we start asking what newness each of them is bringing, it will be too tough to entertain the spectators. The fact is that you don’t have to view the scenario in terms of the number of players who are your competitors. You have to view this in a manner that for the first time we have consumers who are Live 24x7. In such a scenario, do you really think that 10-15 OTT channels are sufficient to fulfil the demands of 1.3 billion people who speak multiple languages and who come from diverse cultures? I think it’s not even the tip of the iceberg. By 2020-22, people will have 5G connectivity on their smartphones, which will take the content game to newer heights. When you will have 750 million devices with unique consumers, are you telling me that there won’t space for 100 platforms to tell the stories? 

What kind of content is finding greater traction with the advertisers?
There are two different categories of content available on digital platforms. First is the shorter 8-16 minute content which is usually available on open networks like YouTube or Facebook. Such content creators generate their revenues through advertising and product placements. Brands that wish to target the audience that consumes this content are receptive to such associations. However, the content isn’t always top-notch. 

On the other hand, our content is made on a scale as big as television content and our focus is only on creative storytelling and consumers. We have the advantage of getting real-time consumer insights and have a deep understanding of their content preferences and consumption habits. Our focus right now is to tell stories that resonate with our audience and provide storytellers with a platform that they can leverage and exploit.

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