MTV launches India's first social streaming reality show

'Nano Drive with MTV' is a reality show that captures the journey of four teams on a road trip on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

MTV, in association with Tata Nano, has launched 'Nano Drive with MTV', India's first social streaming show featuring four teams on a 21-day road trip across the country. The show, which is in the form of a tweaked travelogue, will see each member of the winning team being awarded a Tata Nano. The show started on May 28.

The show captures the journey of four teams from North, South, West and East on video that is streamed online primarily on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The content is created by the contestants while on the trip in the form of blogs, videos, photographs and even status updates and tweets, which they publish on their own profile pages using a tweaked version of a phone application called Gotcubed. The app tracks and collates the conversation happening on various social media platforms on to MTV's official website and
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The winners will be decided on the basis of the social engagement scores accumulated by each team. The points are calculated on the basis of the social media engagement a team manages to gather. For example, one Like on Facebook will earn a team one point. Ten comments on Facebook convert into one point and one mention on micro-blogging site Twitter will get two points.

At the time of filing this report, all the teams had gathered more than 1,000 points each, with the South team at over 1,800 points. The Facebook page for the property is also doing well, touching 75,000 fans within two days of launch. Videos of the teams' journey, too, are available on Facebook and YouTube (

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To make the show social in the true sense of the word, the teams have to travel on their respective routes around India and complete the fun activities set up for them. They have a fixed budget of Rs 4,000 per day, in which they have to figure out their food, stay and petrol. The format of the show allows teams to reach out to friends, acquaintances or even people who they have just met to help them with lodging and other requirements, thus creating a social connect that is not only limited to online media but spreads to every city that they visit.

Commenting on the reason for choosing digital as a medium to execute and promote the show, Ekalavya Bhattacharya, head, digital, MTV, says, "The concept of a reality travel show goes beyond just involving real people in a travel show format. The idea is to bring in reality in terms of people, places, time, their relationship and movement. For this purpose, the show output in the form of a weekly episode or even a daily episode is redundant, as the content is old by the time it is seen by the viewers. To bring real-time updates to the viewers from the trip and have them consume this content, it is important to plug into a medium which the viewer is plugged into all the time as well. This medium is the internet, more specifically social media."

The Nano Drive with MTV is produced by The Glitch. Commenting on the concept, Varun Duggirala, co-founder and left brain, The Glitch, tells afaqs!, "We've always believed in having a strong social aspect to digital content. There have been many travel blogs and shows but no one has tried to make the content and experience truly social. So when MTV approached us to produce 'Nano Drive with MTV' we jumped at it. How often do you get the opportunity to take something groundbreaking and help push it a notch higher?"