Last week, Viacom18 launched its OTT platform Voot with much fanfare. MxMIndia caught up with Group CEO Sudhanshu Vats on the launch of the platform, the content strategy and whether the group intends getting into sports. Excerpts from the interview…
So Voot took a long time coming?
I have been answering this for everyone. There are two ways of looking at it. One, you could argue that we’ve taken little longer, but I think in digital, it’s important to get it right. The digital ecosystem is evolving rapidly. The number of new consumers on mobile, digital, video eco-system this year will double compared to last year. So I think we are fresh for them. Two, it’s about getting a product and content right. For digital, you have to keep refreshing technology every year. Tech upgrades which are needed for digital products are almost at a frequency of a year so it’s like a new product for everyone.
So would you say that there’s a first-mover disadvantage for those who came in early?
No, I would say that I think the point is if you’ve got your product and content differentiated, you are as good as first-mover here.
There’s a lot of talk about OTT, including the FICCI-KPMG report. On how it’s going to boom in a big way. For Viacom18, this kind-of completes the picture, right?
Yes, yes. I think it’s good that we have got a product now which sort of stitches all our content for the viewer in a very digital experience. Another differentiation is we haven’t gone TV to digital. Yes, we’ve got a lot of original hours of content of television which will be on this product but we’ve done a digital product and I think that’s a fundamental difference from bringing your TV starting with a brand name, starting with the discoverability. I don’t know whether you notice small small things. Each of our programmes have a 40-60-word description, each of the episode within that tells you what is happening, that’s a very digital product… that’s the way the digital piece goes.
A lot of work has gone into the existing piece also. But tell me, what’s going to happen is from now onwards the existing websites of the various channesl that you have, whether it’s the Colors or MTV websites, some of which are exceedingly popular will now obviously merge into Voot, right?
No, I think what will happen is our product websites, for all our channel websites and brand websites will remain because they’re very important marketing tools, they will remain but videos, the moment you want to watch and you will also have an option to start playing the video from there. But, supposing you go onto Colors and you want to watch Naagin, what it will do is it will bring you to Voot and will play Naagin for you… But our websites and our social interaction tools, our Facebook pages, all that will remain.
You mentioned about all the programming across channels that you have will be on Voot. Does this mean that some of your older shows which aren’t on air right now will also be there?
Yes. So we do about 10,000 hours of programming every year from Viacom 18. To answer your question, most of our stuff will be there but we’ve picked and chosen things. We’ve not put everything which was there in the past. For instance, if someone wants to see Balika Vadhu from the beginning will that option be there? The answer is yes.
Specifically, will Comedy night with Kapil be there?
Obviously it will be there.
He has left and joined another channel…
But it is our content so it will definitely be there and it will find a pride of place under comedy. We are proud of that work, and it is on Voot.
Coming back to Viacom 18, what else now…? You don’t have sports as part of your bouquet, you’ve just about got back the movie channel which had been exited some years back. What about sports and any other white spaces that you would like to fill up?
There are white spaces for us to plug and I think movies was one of them which we recently done. Theoretically, there are English movies as well as some regional genres which are white spaces for us. Our focus on youths and kids is a little higher compared to anyone else in the business. In the brands, you’ve got dedicated brands. We’ve got enough white places to plug before we start thinking of sports.
Is it because the kind of money you need to invest over there is…?
No, it’s a combination of everything. There are 3 things with this: it’s very high investments, longer gestations and a business model which is not fully proven in the Indian context because subscription is not there so that is perhaps resisting us. The second piece which I was saying however which is that we’ve also got so many new other things to do which are clearer and which have got much better, and which have got better returns are attractive propositions which we would drive.
One of your joint venture partners is Network 18 and it is going to come up with a huge telecom offering… do we synergies of Voot with that?
There will be lot of synergy. We are continuously working with Jio and there are synergies at all levels.
Will there be some exclusive content availed only to Jio subscribers?
We are looking at all options. With the amount of content we have, there are things which we will be able to do, which are in this area. To give you an example, and this is my favourite example which I keep giving. So, if you look at Big Boss, a Big Brother, we’ve got 70 cameras in the Big Boss house. These 70 cameras are actually shooting for 24 hours. Let’s assume for the moment that for 12 hours people are sleeping and there is hardly any recording. Even if you look at 12 hours, that means 12 hours x 70 cameras which is 840 hours and what you show on the TV is sanitised 40 minutes of that. Therefore, our ability to do content around content and exclusive in this is pretty high. So whether we do it as Voot exclusives or for our partner exclusives, I think those things we will continue to explore and we will drive those synergies as we go forward.
In the last two years, from the time you took charge, there has been much activity. You’ve had the regional and the English channels, the movie channel, now Voot. What’s coming next?
We are actively looking at a lot of spaces and we will continue to grow. We will continue to grow our broadcast TV channel space, we will hopefully grow our digital space which we have just done. We will be growing our ancillary space both on consumer products and this.
One last question… From what we have seen over here, obviously investments have been huge on Voot. Would it be right to say that it’s possibly your biggest investment after Colors?
It is a substantial investment in terms of our greenfield investments If you look at Viacom 18, there have been three significant investments. There was an investment when Viacom 18 was formed and the investment in Colors was big.Then there has been an investment basically through acquisition of the ETV piece which was also substantial And the third… basically this is also going to be a slightly longer term high investment. I think we need to stay invested here because digital as I keep saying, digital models, across every industry are going to be different models and they are not conventional revenue models of business we grew up with or we were taught. The focus has to first be on viewership, users, usage and monetisation so in our case it will be viewers, viewership and then monetisation and there it will take some time.