aha ups its original content game and how

Be it serials (Mandakini), reality shows (‘Unstoppable with NBK’ and ‘Telugu Indian Idol 2’), or documentaries (Godari), of late the volume of original content on aha has gone up. Web series ‘Newsense Season 1’, Telugu movie ‘Sathi Gani Rendu Ekuralu’, and Tamil movie ‘Maruthi Nagar Police Station’ are lined up for a release soon.

Against this backdrop, ‘Deccan Chronicle’, caught up with Vaasudev Koppineni, head of content and non-subscription revenue business who has been instrumental in original content creation and acquisition game.

Recently there has been a significant increase in the original content on aha?

Absolutely. We are producing a lot of original content. When compared to other complimentary services, the other OTT platforms, in the regional language space we have been doing some pioneering work in both fiction and non-fiction space. In the non-fiction space, we have almost become category leaders in the OTT space. In the fiction space, starting next month, we will have one release every single month for the foreseeable future.

Any specific reason for this uptake?

How do you run content? You run content in two parts. One, you create your own content or you acquire content that is being created in the market. There are only limited content pieces available outside which are up for acquisition and also there is enough competition in the market. But when you create your own content piece, the selection criteria of what you want to create is hundred percent. You know what your users are watching.

In OTT, the results are very dynamic. You release a piece of content and you know how many people are watching it, how much are they watching, are they finishing the entire content or are they dropping off…. At what point are they dropping off?

So, there is a lot of learning that happens. And in a three-year-old organization, we also have a lot of learning to do ourselves. So, we also know what the viewer wants to watch. It helps in our content-making choices.

This business is also about having content exclusive to yourself. We would like to reduce our dependency on the acquisition and increase growth through our original content.

Is there any specific genre you look for in original content?

We have seen over the past few years, the OTT has moved from being a personal viewing experience to a living room viewing experience. Now we also have a significant increase in the number of female consumers on the platform. So, we would like to cater to a large set of audience. We have content ranging from some very basic thrillers to comedy and shows which can be viewed by everyone in the family.

We are not restricting ourselves to one particular genre.

Recently you had a show called ‘Mandakini’. It was something like a crossbreed between an OTT treatment to a regular daily soap. Is that what you are aiming at?

We offer a very wide range of content to the audience. When we kickstarted the daily serial format, we also wanted a large set of television viewing audiences, basically women, to migrate onto our platform. We had done ‘Mr Pellam’ before this which was a 60-episode week-day programme. We have just started ‘Mandakini’.

Who is your target audience?

Right now we are very strong in urban and Tier-I segments. Now we want to go to more local spaces and establish our dominance there as well.

Since January how many original series or movies have been released on the platform?

Last year we did close to 200 hours of original content. This year we aim to cross 300 hours of original content programming on the platform.

Any breakup for original vs acquired content?

There is no percentage as such, to be honest.

How much is being spent on this original creation?

At a very broad level, more than 60 percent of our spend should be on original content creation.

What is your subscriber base right now?

The entire industry saw a spike during the pandemic. Post-pandemic, there was a little bit of stagnation. But the last two quarters have been really, really encouraging as we are seeing the numbers go up exponentially. Also, we had some exciting content on the platform. So, both went hand in hand and helped us to gain a lot of momentum.

Is there any possibility of having subtitles in Indian languages or audio in multiple languages?

Too early to reveal much on this aspect. But I can tell you that we have already started making some moves on these lines. Hopefully in the next few months, you will have some announcements on this as well. Having said that, what we have been very actively doing is we are trying to get a lot of content from across the globe. We have Korean series, and Hollywood movies dubbed into regional languages. The first barrier of getting global content onto the platform for our audience is crossed. If you also notice, we were the first ones to have a lot of Malayalam and Tamil films dubbed into our language and present it to our audience. Now, we are also seeing if we can take it to another level and take a step forward.