The first edition of MediaNews4U Print and Television Summit witnessed a panel discussion on ‘Viable Business Models for the Convergence Age’. The session was moderated by V Umanath, Co-Founder & Managing Editor, MediaNews4U.com.
The panellists were Sathyajith Divakaran Nair, Senior General Manager – Digital, Manorama MAX; Anil Kumar Sathiraju, Vice President, Growth Initiatives, Ants Digital; Kavitha Jaubin, Vice President – Content Strategy, aha; Sreehari Parameshwaran, Associate Vice President, Business Development & Alliances, Chrome DM; and Kiran Mandrawadkar, Business Head, Ethinos .
The session opened with discussion on the future of OTT and how regional players are going to overcome challenges posed by Netflix and Amazon.
Jaubin said, “aha started with the motive of focusing more on South India, that is the reason why we have Tamil and Telugu platforms separately. It started off on a very good note. We were quite confident that with a 1.3 billion population, it was easy to get an SVOD audience on the platform. I would say that we produced amazing content and acquired a lot of movies in the first year. Then we understood that somehow, we need to get deep and get access to the mass audience. Aha is very consistent in terms of new content. In Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana we are launching new content every Friday whether it is a movie, a web series, fiction or non-fiction content and more. We know the market so well compared to the national and international OTT players because we are aware and seeing what is happening on a daily basis. They are launching new content every week, but that will be in different languages. What differentiates us is that we launch shows every week in the languages we are present across. Recently what we have done in aha is that we are catering to the new generation audience where we are going ahead with differentiated content. We have recently launched long form content – an office sitcom. Right now, this is the strategy. As we move forward, we need to be bigger in terms of associations and finding new ways to get into the new set of audiences.”
Nair said, “I believe that we needn’t be worried about which media to focus on because there is a consumer for every media today. Malayala Manorama is one of the oldest media houses in India. Media houses are changing with the times. We are one of the earlier players to launch digital platform Manorama Online, post that we launched the news and GEC channels and now the OTT platform. For us, it has never been an OTT by itself. We have brought in the content from the newspaper, TV channels etc. When we started off, 70 pc of the content was made internally and 30 pc was exclusive digital content only available on the OTT platform. Currently we are 60 pc OTT content. If you look at the viewer base during the first year, it is skewed towards TV audiences who are in the 40-plus (age) category. The next year onwards it started changing, today it is 18 to 25 and 25 to 35 year-old viewers. We are the only platform which understands the local audience and is able to bring in content regularly, we have the TV content coming on a daily basis and every week we launch content exclusive to OTT viewers. This has helped in engaging the audience very well.”
Nair further spoke on the advantages gained by the platform after bundling with Amazon Prime Video.
“We were one of the first channels which was taken on by Amazon on the Prime Video channels bucket, where the users can purchase Manorama Max on Amazon. It is not that we have given our content to Prime, instead they are selling Manorama Max. The end users are paying the exact subscription amount and they can consume the content on Prime Video. It has really helped us because we as a company are very strong in Kerala, but outside Kerala we are not. The Prime Video viewers who are watching Manorama Max , 70 pc consumption is happening outside Kerala,” Nair added.
When quizzed about aha staying out of the bundling service, Jaubin said, “Strategic alliances are key to any platform. We are in talks with different platforms and whatever is viable for us, (with) platforms which help us in boosting our numbers, we are open for discussions.”
Speaking about the mushrooming of digital agencies and how they differ among the many players, Sathiraju said, “Clients are looking for specialist agencies. There are big agencies that have all the services. Today there are certain agencies that are specialising in certain verticals. The requirements are huge and there is a lot of education needed – not just in case of clients, but the other way also. People want to be on digital, but they don’t know what is the right thing to do where they can get their ROI. That’s one of the reasons behind the emergence of digital agencies. Eventually, hopefully there are chances of agencies coming together or agencies buying out other agencies.”
Mandrawadkar said, “In today’s scenario the full funnel service is a priority. If you offer just SEO or influencer marketing services, then there are high chances that the clients will move to other agencies which can offer all the services consolidated. In the case of Ethinos, we are a full funnel agency, but there are agencies which reach out to us for certain kinds of services like programmatic support etc. I don’t see any challenges because it is good that at least they are reaching out and looking for strategic partnerships.”
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