Voot to become significant contributor to Viacom18’s overall numbers: Gaurav Gandhi

As part of its 2018 plan, Voot will go international apart from sharpening its regional presence and dial-up its original content play

Gaurav Gandhi, COO, Viacom18 Digital Ventures, is confident that Voot will eventually become ‘very substantial’ for Viacom18 network from its advertising segment. “In the next 24-36 months you will start seeing Voot becoming a significant contributor to Viacom18 overall numbers,” he shared at the launch of Voot’s new campaign. He also predicted that digital video advertising will be the second largest advertising pool to the Hindi GEC in the next four to five years.
He also shared the aggressive growth strategy for the OTT piece for 2018 which includes expansion into international and regional markets, increased focus on originals and subscription model.

The regional content focus will include Voot Regional Originals being produced across four languages including Kannada, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi and over 30 shows on Voot Kids being made available across six languages (Kannada, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi in addition to English and Hindi). Gandhi foresees 35-40 per cent consumption coming from a regional market in 2018, around 10-15 per cent increase from the current 25 per cent. He shared, “Regional original is one part of it followed by kids content. We will convert Hindi originals in dubbing format. The larger piece is opening up a brand new market like Tamil, the biggest internet market in the country. We will also be looking at recommendations coming from regions.”

When it comes to the pricing strategy of its SVOD piece, Gandhi ensured that the pricing will not be restricted to ‘a small set of audience.’ It will be ad-free with a whole slew of international series and movies (which wasn’t available earlier) and more original content, among others. He said, “Pricing has got to be simplistic. The opportunity for premium content will be large in the country. We are of the view that we create a price point for India which will be different from the international markets.” Having said that the COO assures us that the ad-supported business will remain a ‘very strong part.’ In fact, 30 percent of its advertising revenue comes from programmatic advertising.

When it comes to international expansion Voot has a separate strategy in place. It will be taken to the UK, the US, Canada, South Africa, Middle East, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia from April onwards. Gandhi added, “We are identifying pockets where there is a big consumption of Indian content. It will go deeper beyond just Indian languages internationally. We are looking at international business very holistically and integrate it well with our TV distribution businesses. In many markets, we are going to go with the local DTH or cable platforms to offer this as an additional service to the consumer. There will be localised feed.”

The aggressive growth strategy for 2018 was represented through the new brand identity, a new logo, refreshed on-air and off-air packaging and a disruptive brand film created by Mullen Lintas.
Akash Banerji, Head – Marketing and Partnerships, Viacom18 Digital Ventures said “With the new brand campaign, our endeavor is to establish VOOT as an ultimate entertainment destination offering a multitude of choices that goes beyond the norm. #WHYNOT is not just an expression or a phrase, it is a belief system, a philosophy and a mindset that Voot as a brand aims to foster and encourage in this country.”

Viacom18 is going all out with a high-burst campaign across its own and other networks. It will have a high-decibel radio plan across key radio stations in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. The TVC will be advertised on the big screen on the upcoming ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’ movie. It will amplify the brand video across 100+ publishers across verticals for massive reach and fixed media buying amongst the top 10 publishers. Digitally, there will be push on YouTube, Inshorts, Twitter and music apps like Gaana.