Voot boots up for a child-friendly ride

Viacom18 is banking on in-house content, buying up children's shows on rival networks and developing a library of originals to offset its late entry

Over a year in the making, Voot, Viacom18's over-the-top (OTT) platform went live on web and mobile on Tuesday. It is launching with several popular kids' shows, a new comedy show called Chinese Bhassad and a talk show with Alok Nath called Sinskari. While it comes almost a year after Hotstar (owned by Star), a couple of months after Netflix and close on the heels of Ozee (Zee), the youngest platform on the digital airwaves has chosen to structure its content around four pillars - comedy, drama, reality and kids with a special focus on the last pillar.

"We conducted a study with BCG (the Boston Consulting Group) on consumption of YouTube videos. In the end we shortlisted four areas of focus - comedy, drama, kids content and reality," says Gaurav Gandhi, COO, Viacom18 Digital Ventures.

The network, a joint venture between Network18 and America's Viacom, is launching Voot with close to 17,000 hours of content, which will include archived content from the network's broadcast library, content acquired from independent producers in India and abroad, exclusives and originals. By building a formidable catalogue that includes the popular Indian animated children's series Chota Bheem (created by Green Gold and series aired on Turner's Cartoon Network) and original 'mockumentaries' around Bollywood actors, Voot believes it can make up for lost time.

Voot, like most other digital platforms, except Netflix, is a free service. "In order to support an advertising led VOD platform, we need daily active users and daily watch time, which is the digital equivalent for TV audience measurement parameters like reach and time spent. For this, we needed to know exactly what kind of content we should put out," says Gandhi. Among the shows Voot is launching with are, a four part 'mockumentary' that follows Bollywood 'badman' Gulshan Grover's attempt to be cast as a hero and another with Baba Sehgal as the head of a family obsessed with the show, MTV Roadies. The platform also aims to be the digital home for most popular kids' characters with shows that include titles from the Viacom18 library and those acquired from studios in India and abroad.

Four pillars
The content is structured around four key pillars. Kids' content, along with genres like reality, comedy and drama make up the entire library.

While there is no dearth of reality, comedy and drama content in the network's broadcast library across languages, Voot will not be relaying only its own television shows online. It plans to develop exclusive digital content around its popular shows. Not to be confused with 'behind-the-scenes' clips, such content will include spin-offs from popular storylines involving peripheral characters and extensions of the main storyline. "For example, Voot will exclusively provide never seen before and videos and clips around the inmates of the Bigg Boss house which may not have been aired on TV," says Gandhi. Apart from this, there will be six to seven original web-films and/or web-series at launch and Voot aims to add a couple every month thereon.

Unlike its peers Hotstar, Ozee and Ditto (both Zee) and Sony Pictures Network India's SonyLIV, Voot is not limited to content from the Network18 library. It is open to acquiring content from rival networks and independent producers too as is the case with the kids content on the app.

On the kids' trail
It will have close to 7,000 videos across 80 animated/cartoon characters for children between three and ten years. This includes Viacom18's popular characters like Motu-Patlu, Dora and Shiva and characters that are on other networks on TV.

Gandhi explains, "We noticed that kids' content was among the highest consumed on YouTube. It was mainly pre-school content, but it gave us significant insight into the consumption by this age group. A lot of kids today learn to swipe before they learn to operate a TV remote. This makes them very important as a target group." He adds that given their fascination and dedication to characters they like, kids prefer to repeatedly watch shows/videos with their favourite animated characters. This keeps advertisers happy too.

To make the app child-safe and easy to use, Voot has introduced the option of 'gating' (password protected) everything except the kid's sub-app. Additionally, the app has been designed such that children not only find it easy but also fun to use. Like they say, catching them young, is always good marketing strategy.