“For documentaries, there are awards and festivals but no platform:” Akul Tripathi, DocuBay

August this year, IN10 Media which is promoted by Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra Group and Aditya Pittie of Pittie Group rolled out DocuBay, a video on demand streaming platform. IN10 media runs and operates niche television channel Epic TV. While other broadcasters launched over the top streaming services as an extension of the television offering, IN10 had different plans. In fact, the Epic TV content is not even available on DocuBay while catch up TV is a big contributor to Star India’s Hotstar, or Zee’s ZEE5 and the likes.

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Available in over 180 countries, DocuBay streams documentaries across genres. Available at Rs 499 for three months and Rs 1499 for a year, it is a membership-video-on-demand-platform. It promises to add a new film everyday and the responsibility of finding a suitable one and making it available for the members lies on Akul Tripathi, COO, DocuBay. He also heads the content programming for Epic TV and has been in the media and entertainment industry for over 20 years.

In a country where more than 35 OTT platforms are already streaming, DocuBay adds to the tally. However, Tripathi believes, DocuBay’s positioning makes it unique as there is hardly any other service globally which is only streaming documentaries and non-fiction content. Founder and former chairman of Discovery Channel, John Hendricks launched CuriosityStream in 2015. Headquartered in Maryland, US, it is also a platform that only streams non-fiction content, however, Tripathi believes there is a difference between the two. He spoke about DocuBay, its content and competition, here are the edited excerpts: