A little-known OTT app that is only 10 months old and with content only in one language has raked up 5M+ downloads on Play Store with a rating of 4.5 (1.9 lakh ratings).
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AHA is an OTT service officially launched in March 2020 (soft launch in Jan 2020) with only Telugu web-series and movies. What's interesting though it is not a venture by a millennial aged tech or media hipster.
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It is owned by Geetha Arts whose owner in turn is Allu Arvind - a leading producer in Tollywood cinema (Telugu film industry) since last few decades.
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This idea of a legacy production house getting into OTT is not new. We have seen this with Sony (that shitty Liv app), Zee, and Eros launching their own OTT services.
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We are now seeing an extension of this trend to regional production houses. SVF Entertainment was the among the first in this race launching Hoichoi in 2017 - an OTT service with exclusively Bengali content.
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This trend is largely driven by one insight - a large section of people consume content only in one language. And quite a few Indian languages have sufficient speakers to be called a large market.
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AHA has an addressable market of 84M+ Telugu speakers. Hoichoi has an addressable market of 225M+ Bengali speakers. Both platforms monetize through paid plans (AHA @ ₹365 yearly and Hoichoi @ ₹599 yearly).
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SunNxt by Sun Network launched in 2017 is another good example of this trend but not the focus of my thread since it is multi-language (Tamil, Telugu and Kannada).
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There are few more single language OTT examples like Cityshor[dot]tv (Gujarati) and Planet Marathi. These however are not backed by established production houses. OTT apps by established production houses have an advantage.
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One - their content library is more wholesome from Day 1 given their existing ownership rights. Two - they have larger marketing budgets and also have the industry network to rope in regional stars as ambassadors or for exclusive content.
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AHA is a really good example here. Their ads are all over Youtube and TV - something unimaginable for a 10 months old company if it was run by an outsider. Allu Arvind also roped in his son Allu Arjun - a leading Tollywood actor - for promotions.
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And to those who know about Tollywood a little more, they know it is a cartelized industry controlled by a few powerful film families (similar to Bollywood but a bit more pronounced).
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Allu Arvind's family happens to be one of them. So star faces for promotion and exclusive content (see talk show called SamJam) would have been a phone call away.
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However, a welcome change due to AHA is the increase in story & format experimentation in Telugu content. Producers in offline Telugu cinema have mostly stuck to template-y potboilers with a star cast as their safest bet to recover money (has been the case for last 2 decades)
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AHA, however, has realized the flexibility of the OTT platform to capture long-tail tastes in storytelling. Unlike offline cinema, OTT lets you experiment with different kinds of stories in a safer manner (because of the lower marketing & distribution costs).
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Ironic since AHA's parent Geetha Arts hardly experimented with stories for decades.
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Anyway, on AHA, you will see a lot of original content from new & young directors, actors who started their careers on youtube and kinds of stories you will never see in traditional multiplex Telugu cinema.
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This makes AHA a new platform for the next generation of Telugu storytellers and artists. It is also potentially a talent pipeline for offline traditional cinema. And Geetha Arts, its owner has first access to all this talent. Pretty smart move. Anyone say flywheel??

Fin.
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