In the past two years, there has been a consistency by OTT platforms to produce good content which has been liked by most of the country. But it was nothing in front of the boom which these streaming Platforms have garnered after the lockdown was imposed in India. The sudden stopping of the daily hectic work hours which was replaced with “leisure time”, this was bound to happen. Several positives happened for these platforms in the form of increase subscription, watch hours etc. This has encouraged other people to venture into the market but as we all know that you have to try something different to make a mark and the new ones have done exactly that. These app rather than focusing on Pan India approach are limited to a specific language and will be creating and having content of that language only.
For example Hoichoi which contains only Bengali language content. Infact they have started producing their own original shows and movies and are directly releasing on these platform. Aha Video is an another example of language specific Platform as it only features Telugu content. New arrivals like Koode ( for Malayalam language ) and FILIM ( Telugu Specific ) has broaden the market for language specific OTT platforms.
But now with the sudden arrival of these language specific platform, it might be a rocky road ahead for the Pan India platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar etc. This has many reasons. Firstly being that India is a diverse country and a variety of languages are spoken here. But the connection with own language is different and if some entertainment in native language hits different. So if different languages will get specific Platforms for them, it will be easier and handy for the viewers to just enjoy through that specific app. And this might be a problem for big apps like Netflix, Prime etc.
With apps like Hoichoi and Aha continuing to gain and build trust of the people, this has paved a way for the local industry filmmakers and it’s been there mindset that even if the movie doesn’t get a theatrical release they can still count on these platforms to provide them the reach that they deserve. This will be a difficult task for these giant platforms to keep getting movies from all over India with as many languages as they can, so that they don’t miss out on native language content. Even the big movies might be looking to release there films in these language specific platforms as they with there cheap subscription price might gain large number of viewers and will garner them huge audience.
Since nowadays genre specific platforms has also come into picture, this also might be interesting for the viewers to switch off to the desired language platform. But the advantage these streaming giants like Netflix, Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video has is that in the monthly payment they provide content from all over the world and they have decent options for regional language content. The issue which we are talking about will surely be a hot topic in the near future and then it will be interesting to see the approach by these platforms.
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