Eros Now, the South Asian entertainment platform owned by Eros International Plc, announced the expansion of its content strategy with the launch of Eros Now Prime, in all likeliness in May-June. The first partnership for Eros Now Prime is a strategic multi-year deal with NBCUniversal International Distribution. The Eros Now library that has over 12,000 movie titles, original shows and music, as well as short-format content on Quickie, its short format video content offering, the prime service will have an extensive English-language content offering.
NBCUniversal TV titles that include Will & Grace, Four Weddings and a Funeral, New Amsterdam, Belgravia, Devils, and Catherine the Great among many others will be a part of the library.
Ali Hussein, CEO, Eros Now talks to THE WEEK about the association with NBC Universal, embracing the prime service and the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on the streaming business.
How do you think the new partnership with NBC Universal is going to boost the reach of the platform?
Essentially, the original strategy of Eros Now was more focussed on catering to the tier II, tier III India. It is not that the metro cities did not watch Bajrangi Bhaijaan or Bajirao Mastani, but it was more skewed to middle India. What we have done with a lot of the English entertainment content, we are trying to specifically target the metro and the mini-metro cities, which have a lot of the English-speaking audiences. Through research, we have seen that they have higher disposable incomes and higher propensity and capacity to pay, they are also the early adopters on digital video. We are looking at ways and means to potentially increase a layer on Eros Now core mass entertainment service. The second area is that English content either through theatrical distribution or through television was restricted in access around the world because they wouldn’t be granted to a screen to be released because people would mostly consume local content. But now especially with the user technologies looking at dynamic dubbing, dynamic subtitling, over a period of time, we are trying to grow the audience base watching the English entertainment content using their own personal language filters to it. These are the two key strategies because of which we launched Eros Now Prime.
Will that change the approach to how you acquire and create content from here on?
That was a mass entertainment strategy and we will continue to build on that. This is over and above in what we were doing in any case. We have already launched Eros Now Quickie (that has short-form content), and now Eros Now Prime. Slowly, what we are trying to do is, to convert Eros Now from a single mass entertainment service into a potential network of different kinds.
Is the service going to come at a different subscription charge than what already exists for Eros Now?
For starters – for the first six to nine months, Eros Now Prime will be available at the same price point of Rs 49 a month. Later on, once we have got a larger set of users to sample the product and experience the content, we will hive it off into a sector price packet independently. There will also be a joint, bundled offering available between Eros Now and Prime, while Eros Now will also be available as a la carte, which we will potentially be doing by the end of the year.
The number of streaming platforms has seen and keeps seeing a tremendous rise in India with new additions and upgradation – both international and home-grown. Do you see it as a challenge?
There are challenges in the business for sure. But international players coming or more domestic players coming into the business in general is great for the eco-system in general at large. Because most players, when they market, like Amazon Prime Video or Netflix, they are usually marketing a particular show. They are actually introducing a lot more consumers to the world of online video. When the audience watches a particular show on a platform and doesn’t like the next show, they may explore other options like Eros Now. And, if they don’t like the shows we are offering, they move on to the next. Lot of the overall marketing and the investments being made helps in growing the eco-system at large. In general, we appreciate competition because it is increasing the maturity of the business, increasing the concept of digital payments, and increasing the concept of a premium online video consumption.
The challenge is obviously to ensure that there is quality network so that we have infrastructure for a better quality of video distribution. To ensure that there is enough infrastructure penetration so that we have got quality network in distribution on large-screens in people’s houses. To ensure that there is restriction in terms of piracy so people use legitimate content and legitimate services, hence increasing the overall eco-system in general.
You say competition is good, but then the rising number of platforms has all probable chances of affecting the ad-share.
Eros Now, in essence, never faced that challenge because we are a primary subscription business. We work with a lot of advertisers in in-content placement, but we are not traditionally like a pre-roll, mid-roll kind of a platform. But I think what happens is with the growth of consumption of the online video, the growth in advertising will always catch up eventually. Especially if you look at the time and place we are in right now where there is a lot of social distancing and social isolation, people are actually looking at ways at how they are converting their entire strategy to keep it more to the digital means. I am sure the advertisers will also take as a pivot in terms of their own strategy.
Has the lockdown led to a spike in the traction?
The few things that are important in the last couple of weeks is that App Annie reported that we are up 78 per cent on daily users as compared to Voot or Zee 5 or some of the other Indian platforms that are up about 20 per cent. We have also seen about a 200 per cent increase on our paid subscription on a daily basis in the last two weeks. We also started a campaign, Stay Safe, mid-March that offered two-month free subscription if one subscribed till March 31.
