‘The potential for India to get to 100 million paying subscribers is very high’: Applause Entertainment CEO Sameer Nair

CEO of Applause Entertainment Sameer Nair.

Five years and 40 shows later, content studio Applause Entertainment has its hands full with international adaptations, regional shows and movies, book adaptations, originals and more. Their past shows include Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story, Undekhi, Criminal Justice, and Rudra: The Edge of Darkness, among others. Next in the pipeline is the Indian adaptation of Israeli series Fauda.

CEO Sameer Nair talks about their future plans and analyses the future of streaming platforms in India. Edited excerpts:

What was the vision when you started Applause and how close have you come to it?

I have always wanted to build or create a film studio in the truest, most traditional sense of the term. When the opportunity presented itself now, I spoke to Mr (Kumar Mangalam) Birla about my idea. We thought of building it as a content studio that would in the first instance, cater to the growth of the OTT market.

Streaming platforms had just arrived and the assumption was that this market is going to require a lot of premium drama content and documentaries. Premium dramas have been few and far apart. By and large we had missed our HBO moment, so this is the HBO moment occurring in India.

The vision was to get into the market, create series, develop them, write them, produce them and then licence them to platforms. It’s been a very interesting process of discovery for us. However, did we think that by the end of our five years we would have released 40 series? Maybe not.

You were with Star India for 12 years. You have seen the way television operates. Can you tell us how different the streaming business world is from television?

When I was in television, I was on the side of broadcasting. It’s a very important and stressful job. A platform executive today has to take the right decisions, deliver on a whole bunch of business metrics and ensure they are ticking boxes on creativity, revenue and subscriber numbers. Where I am now is something I always wanted to do – to be the creator and the producer and to make things happen. For most of my broadcast career, I have been deeply involved in the shows we have made, but this is more hands-on. The difference here, I guess, is in doing these ten episodes multi-season drama series because we have not done this enough in India. What we have is the advantage of watching so many international projects, so at least we have reference points of how they do it.

Doing adaptations has helped because now we have to reimagine it for the Indian context. When you are re-imagining a Criminal Justice here, there is a Criminal Justice to look at. From an OTT business point of view, Madhav Mishra (the protagonist of Criminal Justice) is the first of the key franchisable characters, with the other being Srikant Tiwari from The Family Man.

The quality of creative talent in India is really good and it’s a question of understanding new mediums, economics of new mediums and being disciplined about it.

How important is it for you to focus on regional content?

A lot actually. We have already made a few shows. We have set up an office in Chennai and we are coming up with a bigger slate of shows. It’s a natural progression. As the audience expands, we are learning to watch international content with subtitles. North India has been seeing South Indian dubbed movies for the past 20 years. So when a Pushpa or an RRR becomes a hit, there is no surprise there. The quality of content coming out of South India has always been good. It was just a question of opportunity, and that’s what the streamer has brought, where anyone from anywhere can watch anything from anywhere. If you’re watching Norwegian noir, why not watch Chennai noir? The key is good storytelling.

Over the last five years, and especially with the pandemic in-between, how much has the cost of production gone up?

It has gone up quite a bit. While the pandemic increased consumption of OTT content, from a production point of view, it became harder. The same environment that kept you watching more, also prevented us from shooting more. It impacted us in two ways. One is direct cost. Things have become more expensive, including travel and stay. Locations are harder to get.

TV reaches 197 million paying homes. The OTT subscription business is 20 to 30 million, so the headroom is pretty large and the genie is out of the bottle.

The second thing are the overruns. Anytime anyone on the sets gets Covid, everything has to reschedule. If earlier a project got completed in 8-12 months, it gets completed in 18-20 months now. Then there are some hidden costs. The streaming business has done so well from a content point of view that even talent cost has gone up. So overall, it is a more expensive business than, say, five years ago. But I think it’s a good sign in a way because it demonstrates growth. If things are becoming more expensive, it means there must be a market for it. The other thing that’s creating some impact is the overall economy. If prices go up in general, then the entertainment business will also be impacted.

There are some who say that streaming platforms have seen their boom period and things will slowly back down from here. Your comment?

I don’t think so. 5G is about to come. The TV business reaches 197 million paying homes. The OTT subscription business is 20-30 million, so the headroom is pretty large and the genie is out of the bottle. The question now is how the economics play out. Every business has its honeymoon period. Then a reality check sets in. You understand the market better and you continue to build it. The potential for India to get to 100 million paying subscribers is very high. That’s the goal. From there, it can go up to 200 million paying subscribers. What has to happen along the way is to figure out the correct cost versus revenue dynamics. The boom is only getting started now.

There are a billion people with devices in their hands and connectivity. I don’t think people can stop listening or consuming stories. The failure of this business will be if people don’t want to watch anything anymore.

There is so much talk of censorship on OTT platforms. Do you self-censor your content?

Many years ago when I joined Star TV, my first boss told me something which has stayed with me. He said to remember that with television, you’re an invited guest in someone’s home and you should therefore behave yourself the way a guest would behave. So I’m an invited guest in your home and life. The responsibility is on us as creators to be cognizant of that.

Secondly, you can argue that one can push the envelope here because unlike TV, which is a one size fits all, there are different audiences which streaming does offer. With streaming, I can show you more edgy stuff, but as long as whatever I am telling is linked to the story, then it works. The minute it becomes ‘let me just titillate you for the sake of titillating you’, invariably you get into trouble.

With regard to censorship, it’s always been there. It was there even in the '70s and '80s. Censorship comes both from societal and establishment norms. We are creators and storytellers. We should not be activists. When we approach stuff, we are not looking at it with the point of view of should we say this or not. If you see Aparna Sen’s movie (The Rapist), it’s a fantastic movie addressing a variety of societal issues and she is doing it just the right way.

It is the job of art to disrupt, to disturb, to be subversive and to tell stories you’re not supposed to tell. But it’s also the job of art to entertain, and art has always found a way. In the '70s, the angry young man was an anti-establishment position. Look at Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. We should focus on art and telling these stories in the smartest possible way and make them resonate with the audience. Pure propaganda is not entertainment.