New seasons of popular series like Byomkesh 7, Montu Pilot 2, and Eken Babu 5 are part of the upcoming slate announced by Bengali streaming platform Hoichoi on its fifth anniversary on September 25. The OTT’s new content will include 20 originals as part of its targeted 100 originals by the end of 2022, along with several world digital premieres.
Other shows and movies coming up include Srikanto, Mahabharat Murders, Troilokkyo, Rudrabinar Obhshaap, Uttaran, Tiktiki, Indu actor Anirban Bhattacharya’s feature film directorial debut Mandaar, the web series Swapan Kumar Obolombone Bottolar Goyenda, Anjan Dutt’s Khyapa Shohor, and actor Ritwick Chakraborty’s digital debut series Gora.
The lineup also consists of some Bangladesh content, five of which have been announced: Boli, Karagar, Kaiser, Bodh, and filmmaker Ashfaq Nipun’s Sabrina.
Speaking to Silvercreen India about the business aspect, market expansion and growth of the streaming platform in its fifth year, Hoichoi’s co-founder Vishnu Mohta says he is “very excited about what lies ahead.”
According to a statement from the streaming platform, Hoichoi has seen a two-fold growth in its overall watch-time and monthly active streaming users and a 4x growth in viewership, not only in India but also in Bangladesh. The monthly subscription numbers in Bangladesh have also doubled every month since last year.
Though the Covid-19 pandemic is a contributing factor in this expansion, Mohta says it primarily comes down to the marketing. “We focus a great deal on our shows, not just the movies. Since we’ve got a huge treasure trove of data and feedback from customers, we go into shows with a lot more clarity on what the customer wants, what we sell and what we didn’t do so well. I think the pandemic has given us the opportunity to take this to the next level.”
While the investment of multiple brands has contributed significantly to the expansion, Hoichoi does not want to include advertisements in its streams, assures Mohta. He says he has been very selective about their brand collaboration and it is only for the purpose of providing free content to the audience. “From the audience perspective, people who are not subscribers can also sample a lot of content. It’s a win-win situation.”
Hoichoi, which began with a primarily young adult audience, has now transcended that age bracket and reaches out to audiences ranging from teenagers to their grand parents. “People of all age brackets and social backgrounds watch online content. That is why we have a combination of new and old content – we’ve got content that goes back 50 years,” Mohta says.
The platform is also aiming to identify the right content mix for countries like the US, UK, Australia and Canada, which already contribute 40% of the overall direct subscription revenue for the platform.
With its increasing international reach, Hoichoi is planning to launch digital gift cards and offer a ‘Freemium’ subscription this Durga pujo season across countries like the US, UK, Australia, Singapore and the Middle East that will offer special pricing plans.
While theatres and cinema halls have slowly started reopening, Mohta is still confident that Hoichoi’s revenue will continue its upward trend thanks to the content that is to come.
Though Hoichoi is an exclusively Bengali streaming platform, it has recently also released Bengali content dubbed in Hindi, which he says has received a good response. In view of this, there are plans to expand into other languages as well in the future, he adds.
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Hoichoi has recently featured digital debuts of popular filmmakers such as Anjan Dutt and Srijit Mukherji, and content from them is lined up in the season 5 pack as well. However, since OTTs are still in their infancy, Mohta believes this is a good time to experiment. So the platform will continue to feature budding filmmakers and actors, he says. “A lot of fresh ideas come from people who are relatively new. So we are always excited to work with new talent.”
On the new regulation of OTT platforms with the introduction of the new IT Rules 2021, Mohta says “I think it’s a very fair, democratic and progressive way of handling content because it has democratized the escalation matrix. Any customer can put forward their views and complaints, which the platform has to then evaluate. It has been working great over the last few months. It’s a great opportunity for everyone to have a conversation.”