India Today Group refreshes its short video news app Tak

India Today Group is refreshing its short video news app Tak with content differentiation, personalisation and better engagement. The app is a pool of 18 channels offering content in 11 genres across four languages, covering national, regional and special-interest segments. Tak app has also introduced the Fatak feature to offer news updates in 30 seconds. It also has the capability to offer multiple live streams at a point. The platform also offers related videos for a better and deeper understanding of the news event to the user.

Other feature on the app includes the home page which offers curated top five video-based on editorial preference and viewer’s consumption algorithms. The spotlight section has the profile and the content telecast through anchors. Users can consume content of their favourite anchors through this section.  It covers nine different content genres –National News, Sports News, Regional News, Business News, Crime News, Astrology, Fitness, Lifestyle, literature. The 18 channels on the app include News Tak, Sports Tak, Crime Tak, Bharat Tak, Biz Tak, UP Tak, Bihar Tak, Life Tak, Sahitya Tak, Fit Tak, Mumbai Tak, MP Tak, Astro Tak, Dilli Tak, Rajasthan Tak, Gujarat Tak, Punjab Tak and Haryana Tak.

Tak has 44+ million subscribers and 9 billion views annually across various social media platforms. “We have 18 Tak channels which have total views of 9 billion in a year while subscriber base in 45 million. We would be the biggest place of consumption in the news genre in terms of views and subscriptions. This is now a natively digital-first consumption,” said Vivek Gaur, COO, Tak Channels, India Today Group. Having garnered so many users across social media platforms, the company decided to move these channels to their own destinations. “To do that, three things are required - Content differentiation, personalisation, and engagement,” Gaur added.

“This is digital content which is created by the Tak team. These videos are not TV videos, but the ones created by our teams. You will not find these videos anywhere else except the Tak channels. There are two differentiators that we are pitching in one is we are launching Fatak feature exclusively on the app. The second differentiator is that of multiple live streams. We have capabilities of doing 10 live streams at a time from different locations,” said Tak Channels Managing Editor Milind Khandekar.

He further stated Fatak videos will be available on social platforms only as a marketing tool and not as a complete experience. On the capability to do multiple lives at a time, Khandekar said that this is something that no linear broadcaster can offer.

Creativeland Asia’s design division CLA Design Lab created the master brand design and overall design architecture for the brand. Creativeland Asia is also developing the overall communication and positioning strategy on brand TAK. Sajan Raj Kurup, Founder & Chairman of Creativeland Asia, said, “It is always exciting to build a brand ground up. I personally worked closely with Vivek and his wonderful team on the conceptualisation and direction of this brand. After months of extensive collaborations between our design, strategy, communications and production team, I am excited to see the brand out there ready to take off.”

The Tak architecture is built on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to customise the content in accordance with the user’s preference. “The app is non-intrusive and doesn’t seek user information. The AI-ML technology enables tracking the user’s preference for content and lists its videos accordingly, keeping the user’s privacy secured,” Gaur added.

The app offers personalisation by continuously refreshing the feed and offering content that users have interacted with. On engagement, Tak app has partnered with Vimeo for live polls on the video feed. To participate in the polls, users will have to come to the app.

The app will also offer Play-Along quizzes besides allowing users to come and actively debate with Tak anchors. Users can also debate among themselves which will be moderated by Tak. “We are expecting to have similar numbers on the app that we have on social platforms, but that will take time. In the next 12-24 months, we have to have bigger numbers on the app than what we have on social platforms,” Gaur said.

Gaur also said that own destination versus social destinations generally leads to 10X growth in revenue in the next three years. “We have not started monetising. We are not monetising anything through Google which is a low-hanging fruit. Ads also make your own content look very commoditised. We will serve native through a third party ad serving platform Ad Butler,” he noted.