Arré Launches Arré Studio, ropes in Harsh Dave

Arré, India’s rapidly growing original content platform founded by B. Saikumar, Ajay Chacko and Sanjay Ray Chaudhuri, launches the Arré Studio focused on original shows in collaboration with international and domestic OTT platforms, broadcast television and movie screens. The studio will be genre and format agnostic, in line with the fast evolving tastes and appetites of audiences across the country. The studio has already begun work on a number of shows including originals in regional languages.  

In a little over two years of launch, Arré has created multiple fiction and reality show franchises and properties such as the hugely popular A.I.SHA My Virtual Girlfriend, Official Chukyagiri, Official CEOgiri, The Real High, I Don’t Watch TV, The Adventures of Abbaas Mastan, Arré Ho Ja Re-gender, This Week in Food, The Farm Life, which have won accolades globally at festivals such as the Webbys, LA Web Fest and the South Florida Web Festival.

Furthering its original content play, Arré will now see the launch of some very large-scale shows and films in partnership with OTT platforms and broadcast television, across languages and genres, in addition to its repertoire on its own platform. The Studio is putting together a team comprising of domestic and international talent to help build creative scale and collaborate with the best across the world. 

Veteran film-maker and ad-man Harsh Dave has joined Arré for its Studio venture as Executive Producer. Harsh will strengthen Arré Studio’s development and execution capabilities in the original content space. 

Harsh has been a production veteran and has a wide body of work across television, feature film production and advertising, spanning over two decades. He has produced popular television shows such as Uttaran, Tumhari Disha and Rakhi and has been involved in the line production of international feature films such as The Other End of the Line, Basmati Blues, and The Man Who Knew Infinity. Harsh’s advertising work includes producing commercials for a variety of global companies such as P&G, Unilever, PepsiCo, Renault, Hero, Samsung, and Diageo.

The original content market in India is expected to be a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. Indian and international OTT platforms have acknowledged original programming as the driving force for growth of subscribers and viewers. Broadcast television too, is looking for new idioms in entertainment programming. Arré is aiming to be a significant player in this space.

Sanjay Ray Chaudhuri, Co-Founder and Creative Head, Arré, said, “We’re hugely excited about our Studio projects, which I believe could be breaking new ground in the original content space in India. We’re looking to put together a varied and exceptional talent pool for the venture, and I’m delighted to have Harsh join our team.”

Ajay Chacko, Co-Founder and CEO, Arré, said, “Harsh brings with him tremendous amounts of experience and creative energy. His repertoire is fairly diverse and spans interesting work across TV, Bollywood, Hollywood and advertising. With him on board Arré Studio, we hope to double our efforts to bring high-quality entertainment to Indian and international audiences.”

Harsh Dave said, “Arré has been quite cutting edge with respect to its originals slate on its platform and I’m excited about the next slate of projects which are bigger and better. We aim to become the country’s foremost studio in quality original programming and I’m delighted to be part of this journey.”