Ferzad Palia on Voot’s SVOD Play

Ferzad Palia, who oversees the Indian SVOD platforms Voot Select and Voot Kids, tells World Screen about how the company is driving gains in the country’s competitive streaming landscape.

Palia, head of SVOD and the international business at Viacom18, is bullish on the company’s SVOD aspirations following the strong launch of Voot Select in early 2020, building upon Voot’s already successful AVOD proposition. In this wide-ranging interview he discusses the content strategy at Voot Select and Voot Kids and offers his perspectives on India’s fast-growing OTT business.

WS: What’s the latest with Voot Select?
PALIA: We are a baby of the pandemic. We came out in March 2020, two weeks before lockdown. On the business side, it was challenging. We had our posters up all over the countryside, and we had to take them down because the government wanted to use them for Covid-related messaging. We had to change our media plan in our first week! But it’s been phenomenal. I don’t think we could have asked for a better start. The pandemic played as a catalyst in a way that none of us could imagine.

WS: What niche has the service carved for itself in this very competitive environment in India?
PALIA: If you visualize the audience as a pyramid, right at the top end you have the premium, elite audience, the NCCS [New Consumer Classification System] A-1 kind of audience: well-heeled, price is not a concern, early adopters. That is where many competitors who came in early started making inroads, with international content especially. Then you have the mid rung, which is a discerning audience that wants to watch content beyond TV—so the originals, new movie releases and so on. And then there’s the bottom of the pyramid, the mass consumption of OTT, which is what India is known for in terms of scale. From a content preference point of view, they are heavy consumers of TV, and they also catch up on various services. So, the way we began was talking to the bottom end and the mid rung of the pyramid through our catch-up offering. It’s very different from the way the global players started, which is to begin at the top and penetrate downwards. We tasted great success because we had a very affordable price point. We even started with a free trial for 14 days for an annual pack and three days for a monthly subscriber. That did very well. That brought in a good set of audiences. We launched with a very successful original called Asur. It was a new world for everyone. People wanted to consume new content. Fresh, original television content had gone off because we couldn’t shoot. Then, that entire audience came onto Voot Select to see what Asur was all about. They sampled a lot of our other offerings. We had many originals that we lined up one after the other, given that we had a bank of them. That’s where our story began, with originals. We have a very large AVOD base on Voot and a lot of rich insights, which we then put to use to create and curate exclusive experiences for content that already had a certain amount of fandom: the large properties like Bigg Boss, Fear Factor, Roadies. The network has a very strong presence in unscripted and that’s what we used to our advantage. We essentially went from Voot being the catch-up destination for Viacom18 into becoming, with the use of a paywall, the premiere destination for all content from Viacom18. Network content now comes onto Voot Select 24 hours before it goes onto TV. So the windowing completely changed. It’s now SVOD, TV, AVOD. That worked well for us. We introduced a lot of unique experiences like a 24-hour live channel for Bigg Boss. Then we got our originals mojo back towards the end of the year and a diverse set of international content, ranging from Showtime and CBS content to lots of stuff around cooking. It’s a nice, well-rounded slate of offerings for the bottom end of the pyramid, which is the TV [on catch-up audience], the mid-rung through originals and movies, and some part of the top end through the international content. We’ve seen success like we would not have really in all humility imagined when we were starting.

WS: What are the international expansion plans for Voot Select?
PALIA: We have made ourselves available on Sling in the U.S. We are also available on Virgin in the U.K. But we haven’t yet rolled out our D2C product, which we will do. That’s another focus area for us: to take Voot, Voot Select and Voot Kids international.

WS: How is Voot Kids doing?
PALIA: Somebody said Voot Kids is a digital nanny. We helped parents in the pandemic, keeping the kids occupied. It’s a safe environment, so the parents trust us. It’s only kids’ content. What’s worked is that we have some of the best toons from across the world. And the variety of the offering has so much for the kids that they spend hours on end in the service. There are also games, audiobooks; it’s a lovely, well-rounded product. It has a unique proposition. While most of our competitors have some kids’ offering, the power of the toons and the characters we have is unmatched. Both from the D2C side and a B2B side, the clamor to have one special kids’ offering has done well for us.

WS: How much are you licensing from the international market given the strength of the Nick global and local brands?
PALIA: We realized that if we have a separate product with separate platforms, it can’t only be our offering. That would have been narrowing it down too much, especially in the OTT space. You can do that on linear, for the most part. When there’s such great width on offer, and our expertise with building kids’ brands in the country, it was very clear to us that we should broad-base it as much as possible. So it’s a combination of the Nickelodeon franchises, the Nickelodeon homegrown franchises, and of course, some syndication and licensing that we’ve done with several other players and studios.

WS: Has the Indian content production community grown enough to keep up with the demands of the growing SVOD landscape?
PALIA: It’s evolved. It started a bit slow and everyone chased the same talent set because they had the experience of telling a story over multiple hours, rather than 22 minutes for 100 episodes or a feature film. I think that is rapidly changing. There is a lot of learning involved. Some get it right at the first go. I know the world thinks we’re an extremely crowded market and it’s difficult to get in. To me, it’s very early days. The entire ecosystem is ramping up at a phenomenal pace and I think it will take some time to catch up. It’s about the writers and the writers’ rooms. We have great talent, but they’ve always written stories in a different format. Adapting to the new way of consumption will take a bit of time. Where production is concerned, we’re well equipped. We do need to up our game on the writing front, and we are.

WS: Are there opportunities for Voot to collaborate with other SVODs in the region to take on the global giants?
PALIA: It’s something we’ve been exploring. There are two parts. One is exporting the content made in India to a global audience. People are consuming stories in other languages. And the other part is partnering with studios and content creators in other markets and creating something for a global audience. The current norm is creating a show for your audience and narrowcasting there. Right at the development stage is where the writers are beginning to think about a broader audience. Even if you’re talking to the Indian diaspora outside of India, it’s not the same story that resonates in India that will necessarily resonate internationally.

WS: What are your content priorities for the next year?
PALIA: From a strategic point of view, we will continue to give far better experiences for the TV-plus-plus segment. We finished a very successful edition of Big Boss OTT. It was a digital-only version of Bigg Boss. It’s such a large property; you would never think of it not being on television. We did it only on digital and the kind of consumption that we had behind the paywall blew our minds. We exceeded 2 billion minutes of watch time on that one property behind the paywall in a month. We continue to service that need of the consumer who is interested in better experiences on our unscripted and scripted shows. A key focus is to now win in the mid rung of the pyramid and at the top end. For that, the originals slate we have is truly exciting. There’s a lot of volume in there. We’re doing at least one original every month. We’re not just going to be churning out original after original. We spend a lot of time on development, which most platforms do. We take that part of it very seriously. We’re not going to put out 50 or 100 new shows in a year. We’re looking at 15 to 20 new shows in the coming 12 months. All good quality, high to medium scale, well-told stories. We’re also foraying aggressively into the regional language market now, creating movies and original series for the different languages. That’s a key focus. We’ve begun our tryst with sports. We acquired the three European football leagues: La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1. We have ATP Tennis and some cricket, the Abu Dhabi T10. Sports is a key focus area for us. That helps us cater to the top end of the pyramid, and we will be able to percolate downwards. And our international content is strong. By the end of 2022, we will have serviced in good measure the entire set of consumers, from top to bottom, with attractive price points, giving them what they want in a language they prefer to consume it in. The coming 12 to 15 months will be defining for us. We came in late, but we came in well. We’ve ramped up remarkably quickly, despite the challenges of not being able to put out as many new stories as we’d like to have because of the pandemic. But that’s a challenge for the entire entertainment genre. It’s a very significant slate across the board for 2022, and with sports coming in, it will be a game-changer for our digital ventures.