Ten heads pour over page 78 of a murder mystery novel in a colourful office space in Mumbai’s Andheri West. A homicide has been covered up, and the hook is the suspect’s age.
Now, the team has to visualise this plot twist for OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Disney+ Hotstar. Whenever they stumble upon a good book, they only ask themselves one question: Will it make for a good OTT series or movie? Because that’s what The Story Ink does.
Founded by 45-year-old Sidharth Jain, The Story Ink is bridging the infamous and ubiquitous culture gap — between the reading public and the viewing public. Jain worked in Silicon Valley and New York before shifting base to Mumbai. The one thing that connects all his career hats is an enduring love for cinema.
This murder mystery is the latest addition to the hundreds of books whose adaptation rights The Story Ink has already acquired. The engrossing whodunit, which is being kept under wraps for now, will soon become a riveting OTT series. To a greenhorn, the metamorphosis may seem daunting, but it’s all in a day’s work for the company that claims to be India’s first-of-its-kind books-to-screen venture, responsible for spotting and producing critically acclaimed stories such as Netflix’s Trial By Fire (2023).
The Story Ink’s fifth-floor Mumbai office is brimming with books and rare scripts, shelves upon shelves as far as the eye can see. A vast collection of Asterix comics and Seinfeld scripts rub shoulders with more contemporary offerings such as Ravinder Singh’s The Belated Bachelor Party (2019). Many of The Story Ink’s adaptations have already been sold to OTT platforms or are in the process of becoming major motion pictures or web series.
“Earlier, scriptwriting or screenwriting was a part-time job in Bollywood. It was a side hustle for many,” says Jain. But the scene has shifted considerably as people are quitting well-paying, ‘safe’ jobs to take up screenwriting in film institutes.
At one end of The Story Ink’s office stands a whiteboard with unintelligible, manic scribbling — the outcome of an intense brainstorming session. The only words one can, perhaps, make out are ‘dates’, ‘climax’ and ‘sequence’. But these barely legible scrawls speak to a huge market that is always on the hunt for new content.
India’s OTT industry is raking in massive viewership. An Ormax Media report released in December 2022 revealed that India’s OTT viewership is 42.38 crore people (30 per cent).
The demand for quality content is clearly at an all-time high – and Jain anticipated it as early as 2017.
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Pioneering quality adaptations
It all started with a Facebook post in 2018. Jain announced that he would create a company to bridge the gap between the need for quality scripts and the lack of good content. He ended the post with “coming soon”.
By the end of the day, his comment section was filled with requests from producers—some wanted romance, others were partial to comedy, and still more requested gritty thrillers. When he made the announcement, Jain knew he was on the right track, but the response was unprecedented. Soon, he started building up his company, buying and selling rights to books he thought had potential.
Jain’s own career trajectory is nearly as eclectic and colourful as the office space he has built in Mumbai. And his choices reflect his love for movies, entertainment and storytelling. He started with a “dot com business” that auctioned film memorabilia to Bollywood enthusiasts online. Later, he opened a content development and film production firm called iRock in Mumbai, and then headed original content, licensing and acquisitions at Hotstar (now Disney+ Hotstar) for two years. It was during his days at Hotstar that he realised the scope of streaming in India and how it would soon explode to a point where it overruns theatres.
“I have spent more than a decade in story and script development, and I have always been an avid reader. This was a natural progression for me,” says Jain. His production house iRock gave the country its first found-footage horror film, Ragini MMS (2010). Co-produced by Jain, the film also marked the debut of National-award-winning scriptwriter Mayank Tewari.
When he met Jain, Tewari, an ex-DNA crime reporter, wanted to quit journalism and try his hand at screenwriting.
“I was 30 and had switched careers. But Sidharth gave me my break, and within a year, the film [Ragini MMS] was out. That does not always happen,” says Tewari, who joined Ragini MMS team after the script had already taken a certain shape. He stepped in, helped develop Uday (Rajkummar Rao)’s character and wrote the dialogues, adding a splash of the quintessential Delhi humour that OTT giants now love.
A few years later, Tewari co-wrote the black comedy-drama Newton (2017), which turned out to be a critical and commercial success.
“Sidharth was already doing things in 2010 that people are beginning to talk about now,” he says.
While iRock shut down, it was just the beginning of another venture for Jain. The Story Ink brought together writers from various backgrounds to form a team that now convert books such as Apeksha Rao’s Devgarh Royals trilogy and Srishti Chaudhary’s Lallan Sweets into impactful scripts.
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Writers bringing books alive on screen
While Jain’s Story Ink has unlocked the true potential of turning books into scripts, the idea isn’t new to India’s entertainment business. Be it Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games or Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, adaptations are becoming big on OTT and even mainstream cinema. Mani Ratnam’s grand and glorious Ponniyin Selvan:1 – one of 2022’s biggest theatrical hits – was based on Kalki Krishnamurthy’s seminal work of the same name, serialised in a Tamil magazine from 1950-1954.
But Jain’s quest to find good stories is not limited to the bestsellers’ list. He and his team of writers travel physically and virtually to wherever they can unearth an unheard tale. Two of the company’s latest acquisitions are from Assam, one of which is a thrilling true crime saga.
For 28-year-old Soumya Joshi from Chandigarh, reading is as much a passion as writing. After completing her post-graduation in mass communication from Panjab University, she joined a leading daily as a journalist. But she soon shifted gears and tried everything—from public relations to event management.
And then, while randomly scrolling through Facebook in 2020, a post caught her eye; Jain was looking for people to read and review books for The Story Ink. Joshi immediately contacted him and landed a job.
“It was like a dream job–I was getting paid to read,” beams Joshi.
She moved to Mumbai and joined the young, dynamic group of writers that Jain was mentoring as the future of not just his company but India’s entertainment business.
Today, Joshi is one of the 10 screenwriters working full-time at The Story Ink. She does not have a formal degree in screenwriting; she is self-taught and mentored by Jain.
If Joshi brings the flavour of small-town North India, 23-year-old Aryan Jain packs the Mumbai punch. For Aryan, who co-wrote the dialogues for Netflix’s Trial By Fire in 2021, screenwriting was his go-to career path since high school. But apart from taking a short yes course at New York’s Columbia University, Aryan also does not have a formal degree.
Trial by Fire was a huge undertaking for Aryan, especially because it was centred in 1990s Delhi and came without the familiarity of Mumbai.
“I have cousins in Delhi, and I am aware of the nuances of the language. But the challenging part was getting various cultural and linguistic references right because the story (the Uphaar Cinema fire tragedy) is set in 1997 and moves forward by 25 years,” he says.
Aryan and Joshi say Jain’s mentorship honed their skills beyond screenplay and dialogue writing. Aryan was also an assistant director for Trial by Fire, which Jain co-produced with Endemol Shine India.
The writers brainstorm and collaborate, an ethos Jain believes in wholeheartedly. “We often look like characters from a sitcom when we are in the midst of a brainstorming session for a script,” he laughs. Running strokes on the giant whiteboard are testimony to this.
Quirky cushions and kitschy memorabilia fill the office space. This vibrant paraphernalia includes a-life size poster of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), an Unfinished Business (2015) cartoon, and a book with 50 years’ worth of James Bond movie posters. The team is not afraid to think big.
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Making Trial By Fire
While Jain was brokering book deals with producers, he came across Trial by Fire: The Tragic Tale of the Uphaar Fire Tragedy by Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy.
He had almost completed an agreement with the couple and roped in a third-party producer before changing his mind. After his conversations with the Krishnamoorthys and much deliberation, Jain decided not to sell the rights and produce the show himself.
To bring this seven-episode series to life, he collaborated with content production giant Endemol Shine India and got a stellar ensemble cast –comprising Abhay Deol, Rajshri Deshpande, Anupam Kher, and Ratna Pathak Shah — on board.
“I had nothing to worry about as long as Sidharth was on board. Despite being the co-producer, he always took a stance for me if I pointed out something I did not want,” says Neelam. “I told them not to show me crying on screen, and they listened to suggestions and conditions. They did not let us down,” she adds.
Trial by Fire depicted what trial courts really look like, a far cry from what’s usually shown in movies. Young Gen Z fans frequently write to Neelam, saying they are now more aware of fire safety norms.
Despite a burgeoning market, Jain’s business is prone to setbacks like Covid-19. On top of that, not every deal goes through. Other, more impactful stories take a back seat when platforms push for crime, comedy and thrillers to meet audience demand.
Moreover, an OTT project takes about a year or two to take off. But unlike in films, where big names trump stories, content is king in web series.
That is why The Story Ink’s focus is primarily onfinding the best books and stories. But there are some stories that Jain simply cannot resist steering on his own — like Trial by Fire.
“When I find a good story, one that needs a sensitive lens, I will produce it myself.”
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)