Mumbai: hoichoi, the world’s largest digital Bengali content platform has redefined India’s OTT space for regional languages and emerged as the one-stop destination for anyone looking for Bengali entertainment across borders and age groups.
In just 1 year of its launch hoichoi has streamed over 240 Million minutes of content. Encouraged by the audience response, hoichoi declared grand plans to launch 30 Original Shows and 12 Original Films equivalent to 100 plus hours of Original content in the upcoming year. It also announced plans to double the overall content library to approx. 2800 hours in the next 1 year by acquiring 200 Bengali movies, 12 of which will be World Digital Premieres.
The viewers of hoichoi will be spoilt for choice as there will be variation of content available across genres including Fantasy, Dark Comedy, Musical Thriller, Sitcom, Travelogue, Mystery, Paranormal Drama, Kids, Treasure Hunt, Psychological Horror, Detective Erotica etc. to be created by some of the finest production houses and directorial talent.
Vishnu Mohta, Co-Founder, Hoichoi said, “We launched Hoichoi with the objective of making it the ultimate destination for Bengali entertainment and we believe we have taken great strides on our way to achieving it. Almost all the shows are loved by the audience and has become the reason for pop-culture references! The fact that the average time spent in-app for hoichoi is 60 minutes per day per subscriber is extremely encouraging, which is way above the industry average.
We had also stated that hoichoi wants to cater to the 250 million plus Bengal is living worldwide and expanding our footprint into Bangladesh and Middle East is an important step in that direction. These are markets with a potential of more than 180 million customers. While expansion into Bangladesh through local payment gateways, is a natural decision to reach a wider audience, entry into Middle East is aimed at connecting with the huge migrant Bengali population living in the Arabian Peninsula nation. We will soon launch “Dhaka Metro” – our first web series for the Bangladesh audience, which will be directed by Amitabh Reza Chaudhuri – Bangladesh’s award winning director. We intend to keep delighting our audience worldwide.”
MahendraSoni, Director and Co-Founder, hoichoi said, “At hoichoi we try to keep a finger on the pulse of our audience. With almost 40% of our audience coming from non-urban areas, we decided to emulate the successful telecom model and introduce hoichoi Top Up cards to make it convenient for our customersto subscribe to hoichoi. This offline payment mechanism is never heard of before in the OTT industry and will help us reach the masses in Tier II and Tier III cities. One can simply purchase the hoichoi Top Up Cards available for subscribing to our 3 months, 6 months and 12 months plans from the nearest retailer and access the largest collection of the best in Bengali entertainment on hoichoi without having to do any online financial transaction.
ShrikantMohta, Director and Co-Founder of hoichoi said, “At hoichoi we have consciously taken a decision to adopt the AD-Free SVoD model because we want to provide the best uninterrupted entertainment experience to our audience. In yet another first in the Bengali entertainment space, we are now introducing the ‘Pay Per View’ feature as part of the TVoD model. We will be releasing movies on hoichoi approximately in just two weeks of their theatrical release and the viewers will have the option to pay for the content on a-la-carte basis”
Hoichoi, which means non-stop excitement, currently has a library of over 1400 hours of content including 500+ Bengali movies, 50+ hours of exclusive Original Web Series (22 shows streaming now) and 1000+ songs to serve the entertainment needs of Bengali audiences globally.
