‘We make more original content than rivals’

You announced a large slate of originals and movies for ZEE5. But where is the video streaming industry heading at the macro level, given that we are increasingly seeing cutbacks in budgets and more emphasis on profitability?

In the early days, everyone was trying to figure out the market. We were also making larger volumes of content. The idea, at the time, came with a belief that the consumer is asking for quantity. Everyone felt there was this hunger for content. Very quickly, we realized that actually, volume is not what is required. It may have been okay in the first year, but in hindsight, it would seem like a more simple mathematical thing, which I keep playing back to people. There are 52 weeks in a year, and you can’t do activation for a product for less than two weeks. So that’s 26 pieces of content, out of which 10-16 will be movies.

We are clear that equity for the platform and longevity of the association will come with web originals. That’s how we’re operating. We make 40% more originals than the next largest player across languages we are present in. As far as what others are doing, it may be strategic or capability, particularly in language markets, which we have invested in, and built for TV.

The meta skill, which underpins all this, is our ability to know the culture. We used and applied it to TV first, and it has seamlessly flown into digital. That is where we bring something to the party. Not just in Hindi, but even in the three regional languages we make originals: Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. We are making anywhere between five and six times more content.

What about pricing?

When we began our journey, there was a wide range of investments. At the lower end, there was a YouTube-plus kind of cost (slightly higher than YouTube user-generated content cost), and on the other end, it was a Hollywood blockbuster minus kind of cost (lower than a big Hollywood budget).

The range is far more balanced: one big blockbuster with all the bells and whistles, and that’s fine. But I don’t call that the norm given that it is the story that sells. There will be some of the razzmatazz that you get, and some conversation, which is important. But that’s one or two. We do business with sanity and not vanity. You see the biggest names working with us. Like TV, they may work with multiple platforms, but with us, they will work according to our rules. I’m not making some kind of a statement, it’s just that we are clear about our model and work damn hard to get the quality to be amazing.

We are seeing a trend where OTT platforms are following TV++ model, more episodes, weekly drop etc. Will you be doing the same?

That is not our belief. We are operating from a very basic premise that there is a bull’s eye target group for TV, essentially women, 30-35-year-olds. On OTT, you have a more broad-based appeal. The bull’s eye target for OTTs is actually thought of as a different, paying user. So smartphones, payment gateway, credit card, ergo men. So, the content design will be a lot broader. When they design this 80-part, 50-part, 40-part shows, the idea might be of building a habit and appointment viewing. But it’s a mistaken notion at this stage of the development of this category. But maybe I’m wrong. We all have to learn and evolve, but if you have not experimented, you will probably not know enough.