MX Player is an entertainment super app that caters to over 280 million Monthly Active Users in India, integrating all forms of entertainment on one platform – including video playback, streaming video, music, and gaming. Defining “entertainment” for viewers with entertainment that suits every mood.
MX Player is delivering on its promise of entertaining the audiences with back-to-back hit shows. After highly appreciated and loved shows like Samantar 2, EkThi Begum 2, and MatsyaKaand, its recently launched original series, Campus Diaries and Bhaukaal 2, which have been roaring successes. The youth drama Campus Diaries, which was released earlier this month, has crossed 100 Mn views on MX Player in two weeks of its launch. Additionally, after the huge success of its last season, the crime thriller Bhaukaal 2 which was released last week has received an overwhelming response and has also crossed 100 Mn views on the platform.
Gautam Talwar, Chief Content Officer – MX Player in an exclusive chat with Medianews4U speaks on the year gone by, new launches in 2022 and breaching the 100 MN views, and much more…
2021 has really ended well for MX Player, you launched 17 shows, your thoughts on how it ended?
It is very difficult to be consistently correct, we were lucky I think, the content business is if you know how to make a super hit show then I would also make it. unfortunately, the content business does not work like that. You make an effort and make a show and cross your fingers hoping that the audience likes it. We have been lucky and with the right strategy, thinking and good partners we partnered with to make sure that there is a sense of the quality we bring to our shows. We have been lucky that we have consistently given our audiences some remarkable shows and these shows have crossed the 100 million barrier. We are extremely proud of our offerings last year.
2022 has again started with great numbers, how are you going to keep the foot on the pedal to maintain this momentum?
I really don’t know. Campus Diaries was the eye-opener for us, this very small show of 12-episodic web series which explored the roller coaster ride of five friends played by Harsh Beniwal, RitvikSahore, SrishtiGanguliRindani, Salonie Patel, and Abhinav Sharma along with Saloni Gaur as they navigate life on campus, going on various misadventures together. Since the show was launched we are seeing posts that have about 3000 comments and some of them have about 2 ½ million organic views, just organic views on Social Media.
To maintain consistency I will just do what I did in 2021. Content takes about a year and more to get it finally on screen. The shows that happened in 2021 were shows that we were working on in 2020 and it was the peak of Covid and whatever we put out in spite of covid is testimony to all the difficulties and following all protocols during the shoot we managed to deliver the shows. I would also say that our consumers have been very appreciative and we are very grateful for that.
What would be the content strategy for 2022, the sequels have worked well for you, will we see more of it?
From a platform point of view, our learning is that if you can actually create a sequel half the marketing job is done. The audiences who have liked the first season will tune in to watch Season 2 on their own without any marketing push. This is the reason even international sequels work very well, for example, ‘Grey Anatomy’ has 17 seasons, there are people who come back to watch the show.
We have been very lucky, whatever we are doing by design or default all the shows in Season 2 be it ‘Samantar’, ‘Bhaukaal’ ‘Ekthi Begum’ have seen a massive response from our audiences. ‘Indoriishq’ was a finite story but our audiences want a sequel to it, we are now working on another angle, it will be the same crazy romantic story but different. ‘Matsyakhand and Campus Diaries’ have gone into Season 2 prep and on the 11th we would be launching ‘Rakhtanchal’ Season 2. We are planning sequels for all of them as they are working well for us. Aashram – Part 3 will come this year and Queen Season 2 goes into production this year.
We have about 480 million active monthly users and about 150 – 180 million daily active users. This is massive, I give the example of ‘Dangal’ the movie, the biggest box office success was about 500 crores divided by the ticket price, about 2 ½ – 3 million people have watched the film, it is the biggest Hindi film in recent times. MX
The Player gets 10 crore people on the platform every day. It is kind of weird, the numbers are growing, the platform is growing and the shows are being liked and watched.
Gautam on a personal front, do you think that the Indian audience are now ready to experiment?
Absolutely, there is no denial, when we started off, we started with Queen which was a massive biopic and it did very well for us. Not only did the Tamil do well but the Hindi version also did very well. There is a genuine shift, take it from 2019 when we started to now in 2022, there is an audience whose exposure has grown and it is fairly large. Let us be honest with ourselves, piracy is a reality in this country and everything is watched. In our platform, we have a tab called ‘Videshi’ where internationally dubbed content like Turkish, Korean and Chinese. We thought the Mandarin shows will take some time but no, there is an audience for it. If the story is good, has a decent production value, enough drama and hook points to keep you interested, then there is a large audience for this as well. This gives us a lot of encouragement to make sure that we experiment and soon we are launching our own long format.
Will MX Player be venturing into Digital Films?
We have not experimented with direct to digital yet because the amount of watch time you get is about 120 minutes, against the web series which is anywhere between 300 – 400 minutes. It makes prudent sense to keep audiences engaged for a longer time on the platform. I think web series will always be our first priority. We have not yet experimented with features but I think we will start looking at some scripts soon.
What are the other languages we will see on MX Player in 2022
We are doubling down this year, we are looking at Tamil, we have announced 2 shows earlier one was Queen and the other is ‘PonniyanSelvan’ with SaundaryaRajnikanth. Then of course there is Marathi which has worked very well for us. We have the biggest Marathi show on OTT ‘Samanthar’ Season 1 & 2. This year we are planning to do a lot more in Marathi.
What will be your Focus in 2022?
2022 will be really satisfying, we did a lot during the covid, wrote and created a few interesting shows which will be launched in 2022. Ashram Season 3 is one of them but excited with a few really exciting shows which will create intrigue with the viewers and of course the sequels.
