B Swaminathan
Shemaroo Entertainment a leading content power house, which has played a pioneering role in the arena of content ownership, aggregation and distribution is betting big in the digital space too. The B’Town entertainment leader that maintains collection of over 3700 titles is offering premium content and services to customers in more than 30 countries, across several Indian languages. Through the OTT Video streaming platform ‘ShemarooMe’, the users will get access to a plethora of offerings such as Bollywood, Gujarati, Devotion, Punjabi and Kids content.
Speaking to MediaNews4U, Kranti Gada, Chief Operating Officer at Shemaroo Entertainment, said, “We are bringing plenty of advertising options in the app. Be it A-word or pre-rolls, brands and agencies will find plenty of options for promoting the brands through our OTT platform”. Speaking on the increase in the digital spend, Kranti said, “We are witnessing a surge of 25% to 30% in the digital spend overall by all advertisers. According to her digital advertising has the advantage of measurements which other forms failed to have.” She also notes that telecommunication, mobile phone manufacturers and automobile are the highest spenders in digital space. Speaking on the latest regulations in the TV channel viewing, she said it will have minor impact as she finds it not having much changes and would not impact the customer changing behaviour.
ShemarooMe aims to celebrate the fans who cherish the opportunity to watch their favorite content over and over again, relishing every dialogue and memorizing every scene till it’s etched in their hearts. It aims to address the needs of the everyday Indian from across the country who are comfortable in their native language and connect with their intrinsic taste of masala content that they have built over years. According to a Google-KPMG 2017 report, 75% of India’s internet user base will consist of Indian language internet users by 2021. It goes on to mention that India which had nearly 300 million smartphone users in 2017 is only going to have larger growth prospect with the number expected to cross 440 million by 2022.
‘ShemarooMe’ aims to reach out to these masses even beyond metros whose content preferences are not limited to the niche English speaking consumer. With customized offerings on the slate, the new OTT platform is expected to suit the different content preferences of every Indian. It will have seven distinct categories on offer – Bollywood Classic, Bollywood Plus, Gujarati, Kids, Bhakti, Ibaadat and Punjabi and will give consumers the freedom to pick and choose the categories of content and pay for them separately.
According to Kranti, beyond their existing regional languages, Shemaroo is also discussing to expand their wings and is planning to add more regional languages in place. “Of course India is a wide-market having many languages. We are discussing on bringing more languages to the platform for the Indians round the globe”, she concludes.
ShemarooMe, claims to have content offered on a state of art, robust platform, with a road map of features to woo our audiences. The company is said to expand the OTT distribution through strategic partnerships, to offer exciting content across multiple platforms catering to the target audience. Consumers have the option to buy individual packs piece meal or the all access pack of ShemarooMe. Introductory pricing Individual category plans cost – INR 49 per month or INR 499 per year. The All access plans cost INR 99 per month or INR 999 per year. Consumers can download the ShemarooMe OTT app from Google Play, iOS App store.
