Viacom18's Voot and Turner India strike strategic tie-up

The tie-up will see the app air Turner's Kids content.

In a recent move, Viacom18's Voot, an over-the-top (OTT) app, and Turner India have announced a strategic tie-up that will see Turner's popular kids' shows play on the app. With this deal, Voot will add to its already existing powerhouse list of nearly 100 characters that cut through broadcast affiliations.

Commenting on the tie-up, Siddharth Jain, senior vice-president and managing director, South Asia, for Turner India, says in a press release, "We, at Turner, are dedicated in engaging consumers and collaborators in new ways to develop immersive worlds that enable our fans to experience our brands, franchises, and content, wherever, whenever, and however they like."

He further adds, "The collaboration with Viacom18 is a strategic move towards achieving this objective of being where our fans are. We know from our own New Generations 2016 report that 71 per cent of today's plurals are mobile phone users and 30 per cent are on surfing the internet."

Sudhanshu Vats, group chief executive officer, Viacom18, says in a press release, "Online Kids content is one of the major white spaces that exist in the country today. Through a dedicated offering within Voot called Voot Kids, we had started our journey to create the largest online destination for Kids content in India. This vision saw us aggregate content from both within our network brand Nick, as well as from outside, to launch with over 7,000 videos of Kids content."

Vats further adds, "The strategic partnership with Turner India will bolster our content repository for Voot Kids. Additionally, this also brings two powerhouses of Kids content on a singular platform to bring forth the best viewing experience for our loyal little viewers."

Gaurav Gandhi, chief operating officer, Viacom18 Digital Ventures, says in a press release, "With close to one-fifth of all viewing on Voot coming in for Voot Kids already, we have clearly managed to catch the attention of one of the most discerning audiences and the true digital natives. With this multi-year strategic tie-up with Turner India, we will add to the depth and variety of content for this audience."

According to Gandhi, the tie-up will see Voot hosting Turner India's popular kids' shows like The Powerpuff Girls, Ben10, Dexter's Laboratory, Roll No. 21, Samurai Jack, Johnny Bravo and M.A.D. "In addition to the Turner content, Voot has its in-house franchises like Dora, Motu Patlu and Spongebob, and all the big Nick shows, as well as over 7,000 new videos on the app and website," he says.

Voot already hosts Chotta Bheem and Mighty Raju that run on Turner India's broadcast channels Cartoon Network and POGO, as well as Pokemon that airs on Disney's broadcast network. With kids, who are truly screen agnostic and who spend a considerable amount of time on mobile devices, Kids content seems to be the next frontier in digital entertainment.