Voot to scale up its regional slate with focus on Kannada content

Media company Viacom18's streaming platform Voot is ramping up its regional content slate with a focus on Kannada content and has brought its popular property Bigg Boss exclusively on a top (OTT) platform.

After bringing the Hindi version of Bigg Boss on OTT first last year, the platform now is replicating a similar strategy in the Kannada market where demand for content is strong, said the company's top official.

"We have tried this (OTT-first strategy) in Hindi and it worked and confident that it will work in the Kannada market as well. When we did Bigg Boss Hindi, it was a world record for non-stop live streaming. We had streamed 1,005 hours of content.

Our regional audiences are huge fans of the show and they want more. This is why we are bringing Bigg Boss on OTT which will be live throughout the day," said Ferzad Palia, Head- SVOD and International Business at Viacom18.

The platform is looking to expand this strategy to other markets including Tamil, and Telugu but after seeing audience response for Bigg Boss Kannada OTT.

In addition to Bigg Boss Kannada which will feature actor Kichcha Sudeep as the host, Voot is adding more movies to its content portfolio along with the original web series.

"We started investing in the Kannada market starting January this year and we realised that there is a lot of demand in this market for good content. That's when we decided to double down. Since April, we have released one new movie every Friday. Every time we put out content we see our subscriber numbers and viewership numbers all skyrocketing. Also, consumers in this market are willing to pay for content," he added.

Palia said that while the platform has not yet started putting out original web series as many are under production, they start launching original web shows in the latter half of this year. "Currently, we are working with movies and non-fiction content. We will be far more aggressive in the original web series space in the next year but it will kick off this year," he said.

He added that a few web originals have been launched in Kannada and they will be taking lead on that front.

The platform which added one million subscribers in 11 months of launch says it is a healthy competitor.

"Voot Select was launched in March 2020. The last two years have been a lot of learning. Kannada is our first focus market in regional. If you take the Kannada market in terms of subscribers, we are already in a leadership position. There is a section of the audience who subscribe to us to watch TV fiction shows 24 hours before TV. This has worked for us. The next two months are very important as we are launching new movies," said Palia.

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