Sony Pictures forays into kids merchandising business

Broadcaster Sony Pictures Networks India has entered into the kids merchandising and consumer products business with a multi-year licensing deal with Black White Orange, creating an additional revenue stream for the company.

In the first year, it will look at launching back-to-school products, toys, apparel and footwear, based on the characters from it's kids channel Sony YAY's popular shows 'Guru Aur Bhole' and?'Sab Jholmaal Hai'.

Black White Orange provides licensing, brand consulting, and merchandising solutions to various brands.

"(Kids genre) has always been an under-indexed category traditionally. We know for a fact that broadcaster in the kids category can only do so much and consciously before we started off, we said IP ownership is the key to it all.

Five or six years down the line, merchandising will take it to the next level. That is the reason having characters that have resonated with kids then to extend it on different platforms is going to be additional revenue for us," Sony Pictures Networks India business head kids genre Leena Lele Dutta told PTI here.

Sony YAY, which was launched last year, has a 100 per cent home grown content and plans to have 250 hours of original content this year from 100 hours last year, she said.

It plans to add two new shows and have an array of movies based on 'Guru Aur Bhole' and?'Sab Jholmaal Hai'.

The latest entrant in the kids genre space is also planning to increase its digital play.

"We have a plan which we will be putting in place soon for Sony Liv as well. Majority of the online content consumed is either preschool or toddlers. That is the zone we are not currently into.

Liv for us is a very integral part and we will soon come up with a strategy how we can collaborate with Liv internally to build a robust digital play as well," she said.

She added there are no plans of launching a preschool or toddlers channels like some of the other broadcasters.

YAY has a viewership base of 24 million kids per month and the channel introduced the feeds in Bengali and Malayalam this year, apart from Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, Dutta said, adding they would be evaluating other regional languages.

"This year it will only be these two languages (Bengali and Malayalam). We will then need to rethink what additional languages we want to build it," she said while admitting that offering content in five languages at present is a tall order.

She added that the channel has been maintaining a market share of over 5 per cent on an all India base and the additional languages will help it to build and grow the base and propel the ratings.