Media and entertainment company Only Much Louder (OML) aims to clock Rs 480 crore as gross revenue by the end of FY23, Gunjan Arya, CEO, told BrandWagon Online. The company which first started off as an artist management, has now revenue models with branded content accounting for the majority of its revenue. “We have three revenue streams- artist management, branded content, and revenue we earn from producing shows for OTT platforms. Branded content is our biggest revenue stream. In FY22, it contributed Rs 225 crore to our overall business,” she added.
The company claims to have clocked Rs 300 crore as gross revenue in FY22, posting a 76% rise in revenue from the previous fiscal. While Arya declined to comment on the company’s profits, she claimed that OML has been profitable for the past four years. “Our profitability has been growing over the last four years. Even during covid we were able to break-even without any lay-offs or salary cuts,” Arya highlighted.
For Arya, the company’s branded content arm has been divided into two factions. One faction deals with the artists on board and represents them to brands for opportunities. While the other side works as an agency with brands for content marketing. Currently, the agency side operates in over 20 countries wherein they work with artists to help brands push their content marketing agendas. Working on both retainer as well as project basis with brands, the company has over 100 brands as clients from various sectors such as Cred, Bacardi, Tinder, YouTube, among others.
Moreover,the company had devised an internal social prediction engine named Hypothesis which it will now make available to others as well. “With Hypothesis we aim to convert our social prediction engines into a martech tool and allow other brands and agencies to use it as well,” she added. The martech tool is expected to launch this year.
On the over-the-top (OTT) front, the company produces shows for some of the leading OTT platforms in the country such as Amazon, Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar. Till date, OML has produced nearly 45 original shows for OTT, the company claimed. On the fiction side, OML has produced nine long-form shows such as Laakhon Mein Ek, Pushpavalli, among others. The rest are either stand up specials or in the non-fiction space such as Comicstaan. The company claims to produce its own content as well as pick work on a commission basis for a platform. “We’re doubling down on working with more writers and developing new scripts. A lot of our productions were stuck due to various covid-lockdowns and will now be released on platforms this year. While we haven’t produced any movies so far, we have a few in the pipeline,” Arya elaborated.
Under artist management, the company currently manages 90 artists. While most of the artist are from the comedy genre such as Rohan Joshi, Zakir Khan, Sumukhi Suresh, among others, it has also broadened its horizons to add new artists such as Dolly Singh, Ankush Bahuguna, among others to its roster. “Due to our work with OTT platforms, we also manage writers such as Chandan Kumar (writer of Panchayat) and directors,” she said.
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