Arpita Roy from Bengaluru has been binge-watching every possible show she has heard about on online streaming platforms. The 28-year-old HR professional loves flaunting her subscriptions—from international players like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to homegrown Hotstar, which she tunes into for Game Of Thrones and Modern Family, her favourite shows. When, almost two years ago, there was a buzz about Tanlines on Sony Liv, the over-the-top offering from Sony Pictures Networks, Roy was probably one of the first few to have watched it.
“Because of my personal interest in content, I am mostly tracking everything and even if I haven’t watched everything, I at least know,” she said. Her only grouse is the lack of Indian shows that can compete with international offerings.
The appetite for digital consumption in India is growing. Even the recently concluded FICCI-Frames 2017 was themed ‘Digital: Divide or Dividend?’. And if some discussions looked at the growth of digital content platforms and whether it was a threat to TV, one of the valid points raised was how there was a need to create an urgency for the consumers by going beyond catch-up television with good content.
That is one of the first things that Amazon Video realised before coming to India last December. James Farrell, Amazon’s head of content for Asia-Pacific, said in the Indian leg of its research, they discovered that everyone here wanted the earliest movies, whether Hindi, regional or English; content for kids was also sought after. “And, the third, they wanted TV shows but not the ones that are on TV currently, but something of international appeal with an Indian plot line,” he said during a conversation at the sidelines of the launch.
And, every platform is trying to catch up. If Netflix commissioning an adaptation of novelist Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games to Phantom Films brought cheer to consumers of digital content, Amazon Video’s announcement of releasing 18 Indian shows in April was a bigger cause of celebration. TV czar Ekta Kapoor, too, is set to launch Alt Balaji in mid-April with original fiction content to cater to digital consumers.
Voot, with more than 17 million monthly users, has had great success on three originals—It’s Not That Simple, Shaadi Boys and Untag—and plans to deliver eight to ten originals every year. But Gaurav Gandhi, COO, Viacom18 Digital Ventures agrees the game in the online originals, compared to the international offerings, has to be upped substantially.
Internationally, digital players are experimenting a lot with genres, besides regular drama series. In India, the popular online series so far have been mostly limited to dramas with young protagonists, except for a few experiments like Shockers, a thriller from Hotstar.
“There are multiple reasons for this,” said Gandhi. “First, we are in a very early stage of these digital originals. Given that 80 per cent of audiences on digital video are below 30 years of age, it is natural that story lines work around youth and their lives. Second, we are a primarily mobile consumption market [very different from the US where Netflix and others are more consumed on TV screens in living rooms].”
The Viral Fever’s Arunabh Kumar, who started the YouTube content channel that has now transitioned into a full-fledged app offering some of the most popular homegrown series in India, recalled how when he started out more than five years ago, there was no reference for a digital series. “In the YouTube ecosystem also, we were the second guys in the world to do a series like Permanent Roommates,” said Kumar.
Filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane, a coproducer from Phantom that is creating content for both Amazon Video (Stardust) and Netflix (Sacred Games), is really excited about this growing medium. “When we are writing, we are discovering that all the rules that we thought existed are changing,” he said. “Also, the stuff that we are talking about these days, we didn’t talk about five years ago. We spoke mostly about TV shows, while now everyone wants to know if you have watched a Westworld or a Legends. The conversations are changing, and the content is becoming purer.”
Talking at Frames, Zulfiqar Khan, business head, EROS NOW, said, “Content creation is always shooting in the dark. In India, the success rate of content creation is just about 7-8 per cent.”
Motwane, too, is not very sure how it will play out with the audiences. “As a country, we have completely skipped broadband. From no internet, we have switched to mobile internet. I am not sure how they are going to react to a 45-minute episode on mobiles,” he said.
But Gandhi has a better explanation. The business economics play a huge role in the scale that is showcased in these shows. “With BARC [Broadcast Audience Research Council] covering 183 million households and 54 per cent of the weightage being rural, TV programming is increasingly becoming more ‘centre of plate’ to maximise ratings,” he said. “This is resulting into a growing spectrum of audiences feeling disconnected with what is on TV. And digital originals for now are going after this audience. This audience will only grow.”
