"This is no experiment; it's serious business": Hoichoi co-founder Vishnu Mohta

We spoke to Mohta about his month-old Bengali OTT platform, a venture he is confident will break even within four years.

One of the largest integrated production houses in East India Shree Venkatesh Films, popularly known as SVF, has recently announced the launch of its Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming service 'Hoichoi'. So far, SVF has produced over 100 Bengali movies which include five national award-winning titles, 'Memories in March', 'Chokher Bali', 'Raincoat', 'Chitrangada' and 'Chotoder Chobi' . The production house also produces TV shows and has over 10,000 episodes under its belt, apart from creating and producing, SVF distributes Hollywood and Bollywood movies in the entire Eastern Region.

Screenshot of the Hoichoi interface
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The Bengali broadcast market comprises of 'Star Jalsha' from Star India, 'Colors Bangla' from Viacom18 and Zee Bangla from ZEEL among others. About 80-90 feature films hit theatres each year, of which around 10-12 are produced by SVF alone.

We spoke to Vishnu Mohta, executive director - SVF and co-founder Hoichoi, to understand what the venture aims to achieve...

Edited Excerpts

We wanted to combine all our entertainment content and bring it onto one platform and that was the first reason why we decided to launch it. A platform makes the discovery of content easier for the consumer. We already produce films and TV shows and it is a natural transition for us to start creating content for the digital platform, so we thought why not create content for a platform that we own. Also, at this stage, if you see, there's not much original content available on digital for the Bengali audience, which is a large enough base to run a platform.

We see SVF as a premium content creator, we do not create content to make it viral or with a particular number of views in mind. Hoichoi is the platform that will have all the premium content we create, we as a company do not like ads and we consider it to be an intervention which impacts user experience. So our point was why have premium content and ruin the experience by putting ads, instead, why not charge for content. What also encouraged us to take that step is the fact that today data cost is reasonable unlike two years ago. Today consumers are less conscious about data and that is a great move forward for which we are seeing a lot of people now willing to pay for premium content. We are targeting the Bengali audience in India, Bangladesh and Rest of the World, which is a large enough base to run a subscription-based video on demand platform.

We are lucky to have amazing partners in Amazon and Hotstar and all our deals with them will remain the way they are. We didn't start Hoichoi to take our content off from other platforms, that's not the business model we are planning to build. SVF will continue to make shows for national broadcasters, Star, Zee, Sony etc. The original content that we create for Hoichoi won't be available anywhere else other than Hoichoi.

We want to establish Hoichoi as a brand which meets the consumer's need to access quality content in the digital space. In ten years, Hoichoi will be as big a brand as SVF. This is not an experiment that we are trying our hands in; this is a serious business move and it is here to stay.

Yes, we looked at what others are charging and we found everyone has different price points and there is no established price point in the ecosystem. What we did was interact with our existing consumers in various ways to find a price point that won't pinch them and that's how we decided.

Price comparison between various paid VOD platforms operating in India

The International (excluding Bangladesh) audience is well equipped with the phenomenon of online content consumption and paying for content. The pricing is $8.99 per month and $79.99 per year. In the next 15 days to a month, we will be available on Apple TV, Chromecast, Amazon Firestick and other mirroring devices as we feel we will have more consumption on big screens.

We are not spending any money for customer acquisition. We believe advertising today should be disruptive and not be a common way of customer acquisition online; it's more about brand building today. So we are using our various touch points to generate awareness about the platform. We recently did a small integration in our latest theatrical release (Bolo Dugga Maiki). I believe the biggest marketing tool for a platform like Hoichoi is the content we create. A trailer will get more people on the platform than a TVC with a brand ambassador. And when we already have all the biggest stars of Bengal in our content, why do we need a brand ambassador marketing the platform, they are all our brand ambassadors.

Ok, so the originals we have already done and the ones we will do in the future will be a mix of what we do on TV and in the movies. It will be of film quality, equipment, actors everything and the format will be of an episodic TV show. This is how Originals evolved globally and we will also follow the same trend.

The cost would be more similar to that of a film's production and there is a reason behind it. On TV, a show comes and goes, but here, the series will be there for eternity, like a movie. So a consumer who comes five years later and samples it should be able to connect with the content and it should be of that high a quality that it is relevant for a long period of time.

We wanted our focus to be on content and that's why we decided we would partner with a technology service provider who understands the OTT space well. Understanding the consumer and throwing the right content to him/her which he/she will interact with, is crucial and that's why we partnered with a New York-based company 'Viewlift' which has over 10 years experience in the OTT space. We do have a tech team internally which handles the CMS (Content Management System) and meta tagging.

We have 10 shows already ready and only one of the 10 shows is produced by SVF, the rest are all produced by other content creators. We are here to run a business with quality content and it can come from anywhere. So, we follow a Television model, where we get pitches, discuss and decide which ones can be greenlit and then we commission the creator to create the show. We own the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Sometimes the in-house content team comes up with an idea which we get a producer to produce; that's the model we largely follow. We are here to collaborate and create quality content.

We will break even in about 3-4 years and I say that because I see a lot of opportunities in the space and we had a dream launch.