NewsX was recently joined by Rohit Jain, MD, Lionsgate South Asia & Networks, Emerging Markets Asia for an exclusive conversation as a part of its special series, NewsX A-List where he spoke about the organisation and its unique strategies.
Talking about Lionsgate launch and plans for India, Rohit said, “A couple of things are taking a step back globally. Our OTT platform runs under the brand name ‘Stars Play’ and in large parts of Asia, we have branded it as Lionsgate Play. We are now running across over 55 countries, one of the most widely distributed OTT platforms worldwide, and within that scheme of things India is among the international markets which we have prioritised as one of the top five focus markets. We are extremely focused on India and its opportunity.”
On the USP of the organisation, he said, “We have 4-5 things that make us the brand we are worldwide. The first is our content strategy. We are extremely focused on content creation, our curation of best from all over the world is something central to everything we do. One of our learnings and after research that we do is that this content is abundant sometimes with the consumers. While content is abundant, they are yet struggling to find what to watch next. Our latest marketing campaign is to browse less and play more. Second is the premiumness of our content. We offer premium, cinematic scale content, high budget series, movies, and blockbuster movies. Just the experience we are working on in terms of our app engagement, there is a lot of work happening in that area, especially in the Indian market we see there’s a wide gap between experience, promise, and delivery in many cases.”
“Lastly, specifically to India is the price point. If you look at the premium platform, our global peer group in India is priced between Rs 199 to 299 per month and I am not even counting the Rs 500 outlier. We are priced at Rs 99 per month with an annual price of Rs 699. I think with the content that we have it becomes super attractive but the second part to mention in a buzzing market like India and sometimes we get a little overwhelmed with the data but from the way we look at it, we are still a very underserved market. For example, the US with a 10-year-old OTT market has around 800 OTT apps with at least 80 of them being subscription-based and major premium OTT platforms would be about 8-10 with many more launching every year like HBO Max, Peacock and many more. We are still a market with 6-8 subscription platforms and arguably only 3 premium content. I think we have, given the budgets that people have, 2-3 who play in the premium content and then a bunch of others who play in TV plus quality. We are still at the beginning curve of the India OTT market and there’s still a dearth of premium platforms so we believe this is a great time for us to enter the market,” added Rohit.
Speaking about the content strategy for India, he said, “Our content strategy is interesting and differentiated from every other major global platform. Core to that is the belief that technology has allowed us to break the barriers of geography and language. Today people are watching content across all languages, we are sitting in India watching Spanish, Italian, Korean content. We look at the globe as one common market place. We look at our originals as a common content slate and a well-rounded slate that I want to offer to my consumers all over the world. Indians are as global as people in the UK, US or anywhere else. It means is that I’ll be creating something like we have a fantastic series ‘Hotel Continental and the production’ which is based on the famous John Wick franchise. We have something called ‘Vida’ that’s been made on Mexican sisters. If something is being made in the UK called ‘Becoming Elizabeth’ based on Queen Elizabeth I and we have some great Indian stories that are getting produced in India so it becomes really interesting. When we look at a $2 billion investment in content it just allows us to look at the world a little differently. The other aspect is our content strategy and that is worldwide. Unlike some other platforms we are not a family audience network, we are a lot about young to mature adult age groups. Hence, our content is edgy, urban, provocative and offers untold stories. So, it is a lot about that and a lot of that will be demonstrated and nothing to take away from our great Indian slate that is going to come up in the next few months. We’re working with very accomplished makers, actors, and I’m excited about how things are coming along.”
On working with Indian actors, writers, and directors he said, “We have our first lead of originals going into production. We are working with great makers that we love and believe who have knowledge of the entire digital OTT content, storytelling and people who share the same belief system. We’re working with people like Kunal Kohli, doing some co-productions with Anil Kapoor and some things have been planned with Endemol.”
Talking about the response in India and future plans, Rohit remarked, “The response has been great. We have followed a unique strategy, all OTT platforms in India have gone from B2C first and then collaborated with B2B players especially telcos. We followed the reverse, we launched our B2B in November 2019. It has allowed 10-15 million consumers to come, sample our content and engage with us. There is no academic research that is as fulfilling as actual insights. We’ve had 1-1.5 years of actual data around what people are watching and enjoying. All of that has led us to launch with far more knowledge than a typical launch. The numbers with the launch have been great so far, they’re always short of my global CEOs expectation, given the ambition he has around the region. But it is coming along really well. We are also launching a bunch of more markets in the next few months. The second big market in Asia, that has similar macroeconomic factors like India, is Indonesia and we’re launching that next month. We are excited for 2021 and with the vaccination drive in the process, hopefully, this is a great year for everyone.”