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How Voot Plans to Grow to 100 Million Monthly s by March 2020

How Voot Plans to Grow to 100 Million Monthly s by March 2020 2w4916

By Akhil Arora | Updated: 9 April 2019 14:55 IST

Photo Credit: Viacom18 116s4m

(from left) Akash Banerji, Monika Shergill, and (extreme right) Sudhanshu Vats

Highlights

Claims more than 50 million monthly active s
Voot Kids will be launched in a few months
Catch-up TV content is the biggest driver of growth

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Viacom18-owned Voot has sured 100 billion minutes of watch-time on its ad-ed streaming service, Viacom 18's group CEO and MD Sudhanshu Vats claimed at an event on Friday last week celebrating the third anniversary of its launch in India. In the process, Voot has gained more than 50 million monthly active s, which it claims makes it the second biggest player in the so-called ‘' category of ad-led video-on-demand market. But that's still a far cry away from its biggest competitor in Hotstar, which claims to have over 150 million monthly active s of its own. Vats said Voot is targeting the 100 million number by the end of this fiscal year.

To nearly double its audience, Hotstar occupies. s will be able to get rid of ads and access content that will sit behind a paywall.

“The proposition of Voot Kids, just purely in of something new and different, is something we are very excited by,” Akash Banerji, the business head of Voot's ad-led video platform, told Gadgets 360 at the sidelines of the event. “For the first time in the country, we are going to be combining the world of watch, read, listen and learn, all together.”

With Voot branching out into unexplored realms, it's natural to wonder what its biggest focus would be going forward. Banerji cheekily itted that his focus is the ad-led world, since he heads that business, but that it was like “almost asking a mother to choose amongst her four children”. Ultimately, it's about “experimenting with newer business models and newer ways to monetise”, he added.

“It would be a very clear case of crystal-gazing, which business will eventually end up doing well for us, right?” Banerji said.

Don't just watch TV, interact with it 6d6u3x

At the event on Friday, Vats namechecked the mobile data revolution in India spurred by a more limited benefit in of quality.

Banerji said that more than 85 percent of content consumption on Voot comes from mobile devices: “And that's a number we continue to see scaling up more and more, [though] in few markets within few segments, the percentage consumption on TVs and connected devices is growing steadily.”

Of course, affordable mobile data isn't the only factor for that heavy skew, but also that India largely continues to be a single-TV market.

With mobile as their home, Voot has launched 11 interactivity features — such as video voting, in-show quizzes, social sharing, finding hidden treasures, and styling your artist — and is looking at five more in the coming months. Banerji said it's all about increasing audience engagement on the platform.

“People essentially come to watch content to watch their favourite stars more than anything else,” he said on ‘styling your artist'. “We are essentially opening up to the consumers where they can very clearly wish for and vote for the kind of styling, the kind of fashion, the kind of clothes that they would wish to see their protagonist within the show itself.”

Voot is “absolutely” considering interactive content as well, Banerji said when asked, a space that has gotten renewed interest thanks to the possibilities afforded by video streaming apps. You vs. Wild starring Bear Grylls, slated for this week.

“I think we will have to continue to experiment and there are already plans of doing something in that space,” he added. “Interactivity, per se, is a very, very broad direction. For us, the focus is, ‘How is it we can really go wider, as far as different interactivity formats are concerned?' But let's not do it just for the heck of it. Let's not do it for vanity sake.”

A poster for Voot Original 'Asura'
Photo Credit: Viacom18

What Indians watch on Voot 4h6p4p

For now in of content, the success of Voot's first three years has been down to Indian audiences' “massive consumption of drama and reality TV”. He noted that it's also because most of their library is based around that. Voot claims to have over 60,000 hours of catch-up TV content available across 1,600 choices. That's because Viacom 18 produces a lot of both — which includes the likes of Balika Vadhu and Bigg Boss — for its traditional linear TV channel bouquet of Colors and its regional-language s.

“How much of that is supply-led and how much of that is demand-led, is something only time will tell,” Banerji added.

But Voot hasn't achieved its 100-billion-minutes watch-time figure by just doing that. In several cases, like with Bigg Boss and MTV Roadies among others, the Voot team has created over 50,000 exclusive clips that offer fans of those shows — Banerji termed them “insatiable” — behind-the-scenes access and more. Additionally, Voot has picked up TV shows such as Kaisi Yeh Yaariaan and Silsila that were ending on MTV and Colors for new seasons, gaining an existing fan base in the process. And it has also pushed into original content, short films, live news, and even e-sports.

On Friday, Vats said that Voot will launch more than 30 originals in 2019 across languages, genres and formats. That likely includes the 17 it announced in August last year, of which only one yet — the talk show Feet Up With The Stars — has seen the light of day. It showcased teaser trailers for two at the event: revenge drama Marzi and psychological crime thriller Asura.

Written by Harry and Jack Williams (The Missing) and set in snowy northern India, Marzi stars Rajeev Khandelwal (Kahiin To Hoga) and Aahana Kumra (Lipstick Under My Burkha), whose one-night fling turns problematic after the woman files for rape.

Arshad Warsi (Munna Bhai MBBS) makes his streaming debut on Asura as a forensic scientist trying to catch a masked serial killer who's going about his business in a creative fashion. Part of the 17 new originals from August, Asura also stars Barun Sobti (Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon?) and has been written by Niren Bhatt (Wrong Side Raju), Gaurav Shukla, and Dr. Vinay Chhawal.

Why English content isn't the focus 444222

As you can tell, the biggest content drivers for Voot are all Hindi-language plays, but Banerji said that non-Hindi content — all of Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil and Telugu — is growing at a rapid rate. It used to be 10-15 percent of total consumption earlier, but it's now up to 20-25 percent. It's growing by 6x this year over last. In his presentation on Friday, Banerji even took a jab at Netflix without naming the world's biggest streaming service, in that Voot is not about focusing on English-language content and getting subscribers to sign up for 30-day free trials.

Asked about it later, Banerji said that doesn't mean they won't be “experimenting with English content”. He added, "But a huge amount of focus, which we believe will give us the big numbers — in of consumer aggregation and more importantly, subscriptions and watch time — is certainly going to come on the back of non-English content."

“As a platform that gets more than 50 million monthly active s and delivers 100 billion minutes of watch time, we play in the mass game. We play in the game that has a huge appeal to people far and wide, across different markets, across different languages, and across different interest areas. And we strongly believe that yes, English content certainly appeals to a certain segment of India and Bharat, but the larger unlocking of the digital video, as a proposition, will only happen when we start dishing out more and more content pieces with new-age storytelling embedded into them, which are in languages that you, me and everyone else understands.”

Cover image (L-R): Voot AVOD business head Akash Banerji, content head Monika Shergill, tech and engineering head Mohit Srivastava, sales head Abhigyan Shekhar, business planning and operations head Gaurav Bhasin, and Viacom18 group CEO and MD Sudhanshu Vats.

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