“Indian OTT Needs More Show-runners”: Abhishek Rege  

CEO of Endemol Shine India on leaping from reality TV to fiction on OTT.

The streaming market in India is exploding. As per consultancy firm KPMG, India is estimated to have a pool of 500 million paying subscribers by 2023 – that is more than three times Netflix’s global subscriber base of 158.3 million. While platforms are gunning for volumes, writers and directors are trying to please the nation’s diverse, heterogeneous streaming audience. Meanwhile, it’s open season for content producers.

For production powerhouse Endemol Shine India, best known for its non-fiction (reality) shows on television (Bigg Boss, Khatron Ke Khiladi, MasterChef India, India’s Next Superstars, etc.), the OTT world is a relatively new, immensely challenging, yet potentially lucrative one. Here on, the production team is looking to strike an equal balance between television and OTT content.

Founded in 2015, Endemol Shine India is part of Endemol Shine Group, which was acquired by French studio Banijay Group last October. Interestingly, Abhishek Rege, CEO of Endemol Shine India, believes Banijay and Endemol will continue to compete with each other, instead of amalgamating under one umbrella.

For Rege, the digital video streaming space is a way to increase the amount of revenue the firm gets from its scripted content. To this end, his team is remaking Dutch show ‘Pinozza’ – as ‘Arya’ for Hotstar – creating Originals – like ‘Bombay Begums’ with director Alankrita Shrivastava for Netflix – and is bullish on acquiring book rights – this includes ‘The Sane Psychopath’, a show about mental health based on Salil Desai’s novel, content based on American novelist Robin Cook’s books, and a series based on Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Ibis Trilogy’ (director Shekhar Kapur and screenwriter Michael Hirst will work on it) that Rege hopes will catapult Endemol onto an international pedestal.

Through a quick chat with afaqs!Reporter, Rege, who has spent the last eight years at Endemol, shows us what the content ecosystem looks like through a production lens.

Edited Excerpts

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Editor's note:

"Online video content is all around us. I paused a tutorial I was watching on YouTube to attend a meeting to finalise the agenda for vdonxt asia, our upcoming event on the business of online video, before settling down to write this note, a preamble to an interview with the chief of a content studio – Endemol Shine India’s Abhishek Rege.

In the bargain, I am reminded of a chat I had over a year ago when the Indian OTT space was in mid-bloom, with Ormax’s Shailesh Kapoor, about how the Indian streaming world is running on sensibilities borrowed from Hindi feature films and why online dramas tend to be literally and metaphorically dark. We have since interviewed many a decision maker from the online video space; each time we’ve looked at the same subject, from a new lens. This time, Endemol’s Rege helps us appraise the content ecosystem from a production lens.

Rege’s lens is particularly interesting because Endemol is best known for producing reality shows on television, including Bigg Boss. Now, the team is bullish on web content, because Rege sees tremendous potential in scripted, versus non-scripted, web content.

Another thought provoking part of the discussion was around the way OTT trends have influenced TV shows; going forward, broadcasters, per Rege, might experiment with finite shows a lot more, instead of flogging endless storylines with no closure in sight.

Our reporter also discussed one of my favourite subjects with Rege – what makes a show premium? I’ve always wondered whether it’s got more to do with the production budget – locations and costumes – or the popularity of the director, the glamour quotient of the cast or the marketing spend pumped into promoting the show. Rege’s answer was one I’ve never heard before. Streaming platforms, he says, are more “balanced” today than they were a year or so ago... and we thought evolution took place over millennia."

Ashwini Gangal

Executive Editor