So far, subscription is the only sustaining factor for us: Vishnu Mohta on Hoichoi

On September 20, 2017, Eastern India’s biggest Media & Entertainment company, SVF, launched the biggest digital content platform Hoichoi with exclusively Bengali content. Hoichoi has been providing 360-degree entertainment for the 250 million-plus Bengalis in India, Bangladesh and the rest of the world. With an aim to connect with their target audiences worldwide, it has a strong content portfolio of Original web-series, over 500 Bengali movies and more than 1,000 Bengali songs for audio streaming to serve the entertainment needs of Bengali audiences globally. 

In a brief conversation with Adgully, Vishnu Mohta, Co-founder of Hoichoi and Executive Director of SVF, took us through the initial journey of Hoichoi, the key focus areas for 2018, revenue & content strategy and more. Excerpts: 

How would you define Hoichoi’s journey since its launch last year?
Overall, its been the biggest learning experience that one can imagine. There have been a huge tsunami of data that you get in the OTT space, which is very enriching because you understand what your consumers want at a given point of time. Having said that, the ecosystem is very new and we are trying to do lots of experiments which are good for the industry, because nobody has got the right answers. We believe in subscription, I believe that people will pay for great content. 

How was 2017 for the OTT sector in India?
2017 was a great year. I think every succeeding year we see more and more people coming into the ecosystem and discovering great content that are either freely available or subscription driven. I think what is most important is that we saw lots of consumers change, where people started to consume content without worrying about data consumption. That was the biggest technological change in 2017. 

And how do you expect 2018 to turn out to be for the OTT sector?
It will be more than a great year. The experimentations will continue and people will evolve amazing ways of creating and monetising content. 

For us, the key focus areas in 2018 would be to get into all these devices like an Amazon Fire Stick, Apple TV and more. We are also beefing up our service in Bangladesh. 

What about the competition?
There are 250 million Bengalis all over India. Bangladesh is a country that speaks the same language. We strongly felt that if we create content in Bengali, then we cannot immediately make it in Telugu or other language. For this, we have to observe the market first. 

What is Hoichoi’s revenue model?
We have subscription plans for 3 months (Rs 150), 6 months (Rs 250) and 12 months (Rs 399). It’s very effective. Internationally, the charge is $9 per month. There are no further plans for advertisers right now. We are also in talks for a lot of partnerships, however, nothing has been finalised at this point of time. For our SVF Movies, we have a huge bank of movies across various platforms, but for Originals we have no plans for syndicating our content. 

The subscription rates are an introductory offer, because audiences in India are not ready to pay for the content. So, we wanted to ensure that people did not have to think about the pricing before coming on Hoichoi. So far, subscription is the only sustaining factor for us. 

How are you ramping up your content strategy?
As I said earlier, we will do lots of experimentation. We will create lots of different content like detective and horror genres. We will be introducing music genre on the same platform. With this, the consumers don’t have to pay extra for music and video. They have to just pay once and can go ahead. With this, we have the perceptive to reduce the advertising on our platform to engage more consumers. Although its just one language, but the main motto is to entertain our consumers.

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