Eken Babu is Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot-like detective. He is eccentric, balding and enjoys a sniff of snuff. But unlike his famous Belgian counterpart, Eken is a Bengali bhadralok — elite — with a government job in Bengaluru and solves crime on the side. He is West Bengal’s best-kept OTT secret. The fictional character created by author Sujan Dasgupta in 1991 was adapted into a wildly successful six-part web series in 2018.
But Eken Babu is not a Netflix or Amazon creation. There is a bigger, buzzier OTT universe beyond the international ones. Eken Babu was adapted by the Bengali streaming giant Hoichoi, one of the many Indian regional OTT channels, including Aha in Telugu to Koode in Malayalam. They are boosting new scripts and stars and making millions. And some of them are also one-stop shopping platforms for all things good in regional entertainment.
Viewers as young as four and as old as 80 adore Eken. Not only did the series last six seasons, but a movie was also made in 2022—the first to be adapted from a web series in the Bengali film industry. A sequel was released on 14 April on the occasion of Poila Boishakh.
“I had no idea who Eken Babu was when I went in for the reading. But playing him for six seasons and now two films has been one of the best acting assignments I have done so far,” says actor Anirban Chakrabarti who shot to fame on the coattails of the detective.
Like Eken Babu, 2022 shows like Gora, Feludar Goyendagiri, Sampurna, and Bodhon have also been hugely successful. Hoichoi is among a host of apps making inroads into the regional OTT market. It claims to have recorded a 30 per cent growth in its watch time in the past one year.
Most people did not have multiple OTT subscriptions pre-Covid. It was all about ‘Netflix and Chill’.
Cut to five years later, there are as many as 57 regional streaming platforms within India to choose from. Players like Aha, Hoichoi, and Koode are vying for viewership and eyeing the wallets of a rapidly growing and equally discerning regional audience in India and abroad.
The OTT streaming industry, according to a report by independent transaction advisory firm RBSA Advisors, has the potential to reach $15 billion by 2030. By next year, more than half—54 per cent—of content produced for OTTs will be in languages other than Hindi and English, says a report by FICCI and Ernst & Young.
Telugu streaming service Aha is striding toward becoming a name to reckon with. Having launched in 2020, it introduced Aha Tamil in February this year, and claims to have over two million subscribers and nine million active users. A popular offering of the platform is Anya’s Tutorial, one of the first cyber-horror shows in India that also starred Rocket Boys fame Regina Cassandra.
In Kerala, Malayalam language streaming platform Koode, which means ‘with you’, has grabbed eyeballs with its repository of classic, cult, indie and popular movies. Incidentally, the streaming platform was launched by the house of Studio Mojo, the same team which introduced one of India’s first OTT platforms iStream.com.
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Local launchpads for stars
Regional OTTs are flexing their muscles, and in doing so they have become incubation chambers for local talent. They are nurturing breakout stars like Anirban Chakrabarti, Jagadeesh Prathap Bhandari, Anirban Bhattacharya who may otherwise have been lost in the clamour of mainstream media.
Made-in-India Hindi and English shows on OTTs have proven to be a goldmine for actors. Manoj Bajpai became one of the biggest OTT stars through his role in Amazon Prime’s thriller The Family Man. Sony Liv’s Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story (2020) was the launchpad for Pratik Gandhi, while Tripti Dimri’s career got a second wind with the films Bulbbul (2020) and Qala (2022), both on Netflix.
This is playing out at the regional level as well. Hoichoi is to Bengali actors what beauty pageants like Sananda Tilottama used to be for models in the 1990s—a launchpad for a career in West Bengal and a leg-up for pan-India ventures.
The Bengali streaming platform has curated over a hundred shows, miniseries and films since 2017, and is of the most sought-after platforms for budding talent as well as established artists. Popular industry names such as Parambrata Chatterjee and Raima Sen have also starred in Hoichoi originals. Anirban Bhattacharya, who was recently seen sharing screen space with Rani Mukherji in Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway (2023), has become synonymous with the character of Byomkesh because of the Hoichoi show.
Jagadeesh Prathap Bandari, who acted in Aha’s Kotha Poradu (2019) became popular for playing the role of Kesava in Pushpa (2021).
Netflix and Amazon might be pushing originals in regional languages but local streaming platforms are quickly catching up and even trumping in terms of such content.
“We have two originals every month, and an OTT premiere of a movie every month. So far, we have released almost 140 original shows,” says Soumya Mukherjee, CEO of Hoichoi.
Aha too has been pushing the boundaries of regional content. Its political series Newsense—which covers the early 1990s to 2000—pulls back the curtain on the world of stringers at Madanapalle press club of Andhra Pradesh. The platform’s original film, Sathi Gani Rendu Ekaralu is a cleverly humorous take on the life of protagonist Sathi who lives in Kollur, a village in Sangareddy district, Telangana.
Hyperlocal—flavour of the season
India’s OTT audience is exploding at a rate that even the most astute industry analyst might have not predicted. An Ormax Media report released in December 2022 revealed that the Indian OTT audience universe is currently as big as 42.38 crore people.
Despite not tracking regional content, one of Ormax’s reports showed how Suzhal (2022), a Tamil original series created for Amazon Prime by Pushkar and Gayatri was a massive global hit, indicating that geography and borders do not come in the way of viewing content.
There is a new-age market for the hyperlocal. The recent triumph of RRR (2022) at the Oscars, or even Korean film Parasite (2019) earlier, and the boom in K-dramas shows how the hyperlocal is the flavour of the season.
In India, SS Rajamouli’s films, be it Bahubali (2015) or RRR, or even ‘offbeat’ films Minnal Murali (2021) and Jai Bhim (2021) have been devoured by a large chunk of the pan-Indian audience. And regional OTTs want a piece of the pie.
The quality of dubbing and subtitles has the power to make or break regional content. Another Ormax report found that 70 per cent of the audience of Malayalam content on paid streaming platforms are people who do not understand the language and rely on subtitles and dubbed dialogues.
“A large share of the 20 per cent growth in audience base has come from rural India and small towns. The metro cities have reached saturation levels, with more than 79 per cent OTT penetration. Platforms will have to rely on the smaller markets for the next phase of growth,” Shailesh Kapoor, founder and CEO, Ormax Media, had said in an interview.
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Diaspora factor
Actors like Shah Rukh Khan and Rajinikanth command legions of fans abroad. With regional OTTs, Indians living in foreign countries have more offerings to choose from. UAE, US, UK, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa are top international markets.
“The digital payment ecosystem is a lot more robust in countries like the Middle East whereas India is still developing the digital payments economy, so the ARPUs (average revenue per user) are higher,” says Ali Hussein, chief executive officer at Eros Now.
For Koode, bundling up with telecom service providers in countries like UAE helps expats to watch Malayalam content without having to resort to VPN. “What helps the viewership is that they can access an already curated library of content, especially movies, without having to make efforts on their own,” says Sreejith Sasidharan, head of media solutions at Pepper Media.
Apart from dubbing and subtitling content for local audiences, OTT services are also investing in strategic partnerships in overseas territories. For Hoichoi, being the first of its kind in the market has given it a head start. It has a strong viewer base in Bangladesh as well. Its parent wing SVF Entertainment Pvt Ltd is one of the leading entertainment conglomerates in the Eastern Indian region.
Bangladesh-curated Hoichoi shows Kaiser, Karagar among others are already hugely successful.
“In terms of disposable income used for entertainment, Telugu-speaking states are one of the largest consumers in India,” says Kartheek Kanumuru, head of marketing at Aha. The OTT platform managed to put out around 10 originals in the first year of launch in 2020.
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The local edge
The future is local, and hyperlocal, and it is not just restricted to content but also viewership. For all the OTT apps, the key is expanding its viewership and creating more original, exclusive content that viewers pay to watch. For Hoichoi, the plan is to create more content for its female viewers–an audience group that still needs tapping. Urban audiences in West Bengal, Bangladesh and other countries with a big chunk of Bengali population are just one part of its story. The platform is also creating content for cities in India with dense concentration of Bengalis like Bengaluru, Pune and Assam.
Rural Bengal is its current focus, for which it has adopted a two-pronged approach–more female, socio-cultural dramas and the launch of an offline subscription model.
“One of the deterrents in rural areas to subscribe to OTT apps is the digital payment system. We are trying to have set ups for physical payments, so that we can tap into this viewership,” Mukhejee.While Aha is ramping up its content strategy by bringing Korean dramas dubbed in Telugu and expanding its programming with news and games for kids through Aha Kids.
It is also focusing on non-fiction reality series like Unstoppable Season 2, Indian Idol Telugu Season 2, and Nenu Super Woman, which modelled after Shark Tank.
“OTT is a behavioural necessity now. I want what I want to watch and will not wait for the schedule on TV.” says Kanumuru.
Ultimately, what is driving this surge is the need for a quick viewing experience, much like a bowl of Maggi that can be gobbled up without much fuss, or spiced up with local tadka for an edgier and more innovative dish.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)