Children’s Day this year came as early as 12th November, with the grand and a colourful launch of Voot Kids. With a lively environment, unlimited fun and games, the kids had a wonderful time at the launch. Regular press conferences don’t have such adorable and lovely kids. But what caught my attention and surely the highlight of the evening, was the wonderful dance performance that the kids put up along with their favourite characters such as Peppa Pig, Ninja Hattori, Shiva and Motu Patlu. Looking at the kids dancing senior leaders from Viacom18; Sudhanshu Vats, Gaurav Rakshit and Saugato Bhowmik couldn’t stop themselves from shaking a leg with the adorable kids.
At the mega launch Viacom18 announced its first subscription led offering VOOT Kids – a multi-format kids’ app that offers a collection of over 20,000 E-books, videos, quizzes and games. VOOT Kids seeks to create a seamless experience for both fun and learning in a safe, parentally controlled environment.
“Our mission is to connect every story to its audience and every audience to its story. To achieve that, we need to be platform, which is pipeline and screen agnostic.” Said Viacom18’s Group CEO, Sudhanshu Vats at the grand Voot Kids Launch.
Vats shared numbers on Viacom18’s consistent leadership in the kid’s entertainment space. For the past 5 years, Nickelodeon has been the No.1 kids channel, despite tough competition in the kids genre. Sonic Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. are also performing well. Vats said, “Sonic which is our second chapter, is also becoming very popular, it’s actually number two. So the number one and number two channels are Viacom18’s. We understand kids and it deep in the DNA of Viacom18.
‘’We’ve got the highest market share and we understand that we have to walk more and more into kids. And I think that’s where you can also us see one other thing which means that we are one,’’says Vats.
With having the highest integrated market share as an integrated kids network, Viacom18’s overall network share of the kids’ genre stands at 34 per cent, which is far ahead of its competitors, who are Disney network and Warner Media at 23 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.
Quoting numbers, Vats mentioned that there are about 80 million monthly active users on Voot. The total time spent on VOOT is highest in the industry, with the average user spending 50 minutes on the app daily and this amounts to 135 billion minutes of watch time.
Vats further mentioned that 15 per cent of the daily users of VOOT watch kids’ content, which includes both kids and adults. To expand this space, Viacom18 is investing heavily in building a platform specifically for kids which will not only help them learn but also to enjoy without the fear of missing out on the fun.
What remains to be seen is how would the parents of kids respond to the platform which definitely is a promising product offering from Viacom18
