Siddhartha Roy on how Hungama is creating differentiation

In conversation with Adgully, Siddhartha Roy speaks at length on how Hungama is creating differentiation for itself, fortifying its content offering and more. 

How has Hungama been able to create differentiation for itself?
Hungama is a digital entertainment company that today has business across both audio and video. We run a music service that is called Hungama Music and a video service that is called Hungama Play. We have 3 key platforms in play – one being the app, second is the browser and the third being us available on products like smart TVs, which help with our reach. 

Distribution of our services is based not only on our products and content being available on our destination offerings, but also going to various destination stacks. We are available on all stacks like Vodafone and Airtel as an app-in-app experience. That’s where we become a lot more different. 

When it comes to specific products, there are specific sets of features that make for a different experience. If you look at Hungama Music, it is the only audio video service in play. In India, we believe we don’t only listen to our music, but also watch our music.

The other big layer of differentiation is our patented layer, which is our gamification layer where consumers listen, share or watch. For any of these 3 actions, we reward them with point. 

We are really focused on regional content. India has about 8 key languages in which serious amount of content are created and we want to push that story forward. 

What has been the content strategy for Hungama Play?
Our positioning is from 2 minutes to 2 hours. Hungama Play is a destination positioning where I believe our consumer comes on the mobile first. That’s why for us short form content is as important as long form. Consumers are also consuming content in smaller packets. We have a portfolio which consists of short form content and long form content. Long form content is broken into two values –a) Series, which include our shows, TV series, and b) Our movies, which, too, come into long form content that can range from a 15-minute episode to a 2-hour movie. 

On the short form side, we have key categories that we push – be it music video, Bollywood information and gossip, lifestyle, health. Our shorter duration content creates a great consumption experience on mobile and also generates a lot of viewership and repeats of customers as well. 

What forms the cornerstone of Hungama’s marketing strategy?
Hungama Music uses digital as the biggest format. We know for a fact that a very large base of our customers are in the Tier 2 and 3 markets, so it’s a big focus for us to grow our music piece. Our video formats get pushed through other apps as we are an app-in-app service. With regards to our own destination, our big push is keeping content in mind. We follow a content specific strategy for the marketing of our product.  Predominantly, we focus on digital and social media for our marketing strategy. 

How are you tapping the smaller cities?
Ninety per cent of the 400 million digital users are through mobile. This is the market that we want to go after. Telling stories in terms of content, communication is very different in the regional space than in the metro cities. The stories have to be according to the regional market. We make content according to genres, markets and specifically look at the kind of TGs we want to target.