As social distancing compels people to work from home, video OTT platform AltBalaji has recorded an uptick in subscription. Divya Dixit, Senior vice-president, Marketing, Analytics & Direct revenue, ALTBalaji, tells Asmita Dey that viewers are watching Indian originals as they seek local content they can relate to. Excerpts:
With people working from home, video OTT platforms claim to be seeing a surge in traffic. How much of an uptick in user traffic did you see compared to a regular day?
With the increase in appetite to consume our bouquet of originals, we have witnessed a surge in viewership as well as the time spent consuming our content across urban and rural cities. The current predicament that we face today sees audiences having more time at their disposal, which ends up being spent with family, doing household chores and consuming content via OTT platforms.
Given that you are an SVOD (subscription-video-on demand) only platform, can you give us a sense of your subscription numbers? Did you sign up new subscribers during the period?
While we have witnessed an increase in subscription, our main objective is to ensure uninterrupted entertainment to subscribers’ screens. Affordability is another important factor that drives subscription for us. Recently, we also joined hands with two payment gateways — Amazon Pay and Paytm — to provide cashback offers for our subscribers. As part of the deal, Amazon Pay will offer 25% cashback on the ALTBalaji subscription while Paytm will offer a flat `20 cashback.
Could you throw some light on the type of content viewers are consuming?
Indian originals have picked up pace in the past few days as audiences prefer local, relatable content. While recently launched popular shows like ‘Mentalhood’, ‘Code M’, ‘Class of 2020’, ‘Ragini MMS 2’, ‘Broken 2’ and ‘Hum Tum and Them’ have seen a spike, we have also seen an overall uptake of the content library. The genres that best perform on our platform are thrillers, youth-oriented shows, young romance and urban drama with shows like ‘Apharan’, ‘Coldd Lassi Aur Chicken Masala’, ‘The Test Case’, ‘Dev DD‘, ‘Bose: Dead/Alive’, ‘Class of 2017’, ‘Fittrat’ and ‘Punnchbeat’ garnering high viewership numbers even months after their launch.
What is your upcoming content slate like?
In March, we launched ‘Mentalhood’, a web-series. Apart from that, today we launched ‘Who’s Your Daddy’. Another big show which is set to launch is ‘Baarish Season 2’. ALTBalaji has a vast library of 60 originals across genres that caters to all kinds of audiences. In addition to web series, viewers can also watch movies like ‘Ragini MMS 2’, ‘Lootera’, ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbai’ and ‘Shor in the City’.
Read Also: General news sites and apps recorded a 61% rise in traffic: Comscore Study
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