The rise of digital TV start-ups in India

TV and film censorship coupled with smartphones is fuelling entrepreneurship in the internet video parody space, reports Tech in Asia

India’s strict TV and film censorship coupled with a boom in India’s internet usage set off a demand for uncensored video content. Digital channels such as Pocket Aces, The Viral Fever, Being Indian, All India Bakchod, and Fame Comdey have emerged in the last three to four years.

“The barriers to entry in the online video on demand are very less. But streaming video requires high fidelity networks with consistent speeds of at least 2-3 MBPS to deliver a buffer free experience,” says Rajiv Vaidya, India CEO of Spuul, a web-based platform for Indian video content, that has seen about 5 million downloads of its mobile app. “The expected launch of 4G services by the likes of Reliance Jio should reduce data costs in 2016,” adds Vaidya.

The Not Fit series, that went live this month on TVFPlay, an Android app platform of The Viral Fever, has already received about 240,000 views. Pocket Aces’s other video called Ban Ban, received over 3 million views in the wake of a series of bans by the new government in 2015. From instant noodles to porn, nothing was spared.

Mumbai-based The Viral Fever, which produced TVF Pitchers, India’s equivalent of HBO’s Silicon Valley series, received an average of over 2 million views of its videos, within weeks of upload on the internet this year.

Investors have also started participating in such TV series – with money or through acting. TVF Pitchers featured many of India’s known start-up figures from Zishaan Hayath, an early investor in Ola and Housing, to Kunal Shah, CEO and founder of Freecharge, which got acquired by Snapdeal this year for $400 million.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.