Kolkata: hoichoi, on its annual birthday gala titled hoichoi Season 4, takes on the 4th year with the biggest step forward in telling stories. Taking web content to a new level, hoichoi announces 25 Originals and 2 First Day First Show films with new creators like Srijit Mukherji, Dhrubo Banerjee, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Anirban Bhattacharya, Kamaleswar Mukherjee and more on board. The OTT Player has doubled its revenue in the past year
hoichoi will also revamp its platform by end of this year and reveals a sneak peek of the new user interface and experience. The leading Bengali OTT platform globally has completed 3 years in the industry with its grand launch in 2017. As it hits its 4th year, the OTT player who has made a quick yet clear mark among the
hoichoi has truly taken huge leaps forward in what they essentially call their three pillars – Content, Tech and Distribution
Content
With the vision of “entertaining people in their local language”, and having over 60 Originals and 50 World Digital Premieres, hoichoi unveils a fresh slate of 25 new Originals, 2 First Day First Show films and multiple World Digital Premieres for the upcoming year with a “dream team” of new creators on board like Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Srijit Mukherji, Dhrubo Banerjee, Anirban Bhattacharya, Kamaleswar Mukherjee, Mitali Bhattacharya among others and hoichoi’s most loved ones like Debaloy Bhattacharya, Sahana Dutta, Q, Mainak Bhaumik, Soumik Halder, Sourav Chakraborty and many more.
Popular faces like Swastika Mukherjee, Raima Sen, Parambrata Chatterjee, Anirban Bhattacharya are just a few mentioned, who will return to helm new projects and star as leads.
Tech
A hoichoi subscriber spends 50 minutes a day on the hoichoi platform, thus, the OTT player is always keen on bringing the best of technology for its customers. Thus, on its 3rd birthday, hoichoi reveals a sneak peek into its new UI/UX (user interface/user experience) built which is seamless and easy to use for the customers.
A Parental Control feature will soon be added, which comes with hoichoi being among the top 15 OTT platforms of India who have signed up for a unified self-regulation process with IAMAI for a classification and demarcation of content available on all video-on-demand apps and websites in India. hoichoi believes that this is a unified concerted effort on the part of all the OTT platforms operating in India to have a common code that addresses the pertinent issue of content classification, while offering consumers a say in addressing any gaps that may have existed. This creation of a democratic framework which takes into consideration the viewpoints of all stakeholders, while also ensuring creative freedom is not curtailed, is very much welcomed!
Distribution
Having customers over 100+ countries including places like Japan, Sweden, Argentina, Iceland and more, hoichoi announces Carrier Billing – an affordable way to consume hoichoi in the form of sache pricing – to buy a hoichoi subscription for a week or a month by paying with their mobile balance. This will be soon available for users in Bangladesh and Middle East. There’s also, Subscription Bundling, specifically for customers in India with JioFibre and Bangladesh with its top telecommunication network.
Vishnu Mohta, Co-Founder of hoichoi, said “These three years have been the most rewarding years of my life and I am proud of how far we’ve come in this short time. In March when the world went into lockdown, we realised that it was now more important than ever that we continue to entertain our audience. In the last 6 months, we have continued to release many Word Digital Premiere Movies, Original Shows and Films as well as most recently our newest property – First Day First Show – for direct-to-digital films. Today, as the world starts to open up and we look forward for Year 4 of hoichoi, I am really excited about the shows and films we have planned which I believe comprise our best content lineup so far. In addition, our partnerships with Jio Fiber and leading Telecom companies in Middle East and Bangladesh will bring us closer to our customers and provide convenient ways to pay for hoichoi. All this sets us up for our next phase of growth taking us closer to our vision of entertaining people in their own local language.”
Mahendra Soni, Co-Founder of SVF & hoichoi added, “It amazes me that from a simple idea in 2016, hoichoi has built such a global reach of 13 million ever subscribers with 40% of its direct revenue from international customers. In 2017, when we launched hoichoi, our biggest motivation was to be able to tell great stories, work with fresh talent and reach out to a bigger Bengali diaspora around the world. We have curated a vast library of Movies that includes World Premieres, the latest Blockbusters and all time Classics. We have also released over 60 Original shows – that’s an average of almost 2 shows every single month from the time we launched. We have worked with some of the most prominent creators from Bangladesh and have curated Movies and produced Shows created by local talent. hoichoi’s upcoming year will be our biggest step forward in telling impactful, differentiated stories. I want to thank the hoichoi and SVF team for making it possible through their exceptional hard work.”
