Originally slated for a theatrical release, SVF’s Detective was premiered on Hoichoi. With the release, Hoichoi also became the first Bengali and regional OTT platform to release a film directly. Vishnu Mohta, Co-Founder of Hoichoi talks to e4m on their direct to digital initiative property ‘Hoichoi Presents First Day First Show’ and more.

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What is your opinion on digital release of mainstream cinema? How does it work for the vernacular audience?

Firstly, for context, Hoichoi has been doing originals exclusively for the platform from the beginning itself. We’ve got 13-14 films that are made only for the platform. But this is a brand new concept and an opportunity because theatres are not open yet and people are hungry to watch new films and good content. 

While theatrical experiences are not going away anywhere and experiential films will always be best watched on large screen, there are smaller films which are perfect for OTT platforms. The present challenges have provided a great opportunity for these small films that would be able to unlock value by releasing on OTT. This way the audience is not kept waiting for fresh content and the producers also wouldn’t have to queue up their film in the huge backlog that is accumulating. However, it’s not just the producers who’d gain from these digital first releases. It is also a great opportunity for the OTT platforms to onboard quality content because producing fresh content right now as convenient as it used to be. 

Even if we start shooting now it will take at least six months to get a film ready for release. So why not use the ones that are already made.  We have massive viewership at the moment and a captive audience, so this is a great opportunity to keep the customer engaged.

 Tell us a little about your digital-first initiative.

Hoichoi has started many revolutionary properties which changed the face of Bengali cinema starting with the World Digital Premiere of blockbusters and other films. This time, it was “Hoichoi Presents First Day First Show” where we were happy to exclusively premiere one of the most anticipated films of the year.

We are always looking out to embrace good content so that we can reach out to not just the local audience but the global Bengali speaking audiences where OTT is the only window to all regional content.

 Is it economically viable for a producer to release a film on OTT?

 A theatrical release is nothing but an additional source of revenue. Some films become bigger when they are released on OTT and a new model of OTT films releasing on theatres can also be explored. There are a lot of models that can be worked on depending on how long theatres remain closed and how many films there are in the pipeline.

As for the economic viability, in case of an OTT release the producer also do not have to worry about promotions and publicity because that is taken care of by the platform itself. This cost is otherwise a sizeable chunk of the cost. So it’s a win-win situation for producers to reach out to their audience directly and much faster.

For theatrical releases, films might do a lot of business or not so much as well but for an OTT release, you’re guaranteed a certain amount of money and it works well for the producers.

 Who is your target audience for such releases? Is it just the younger lot?

Technology is no longer a barrier and it is not only the young people who watch OTT. OTT platforms are an anytime, anywhere medium and the anytime anywhere concept applies to everyone so there is no decimation when it comes to the audience.  Interestingly we see a very loyal base of people in the age group of 55-60. Since we have a collection of retro classics we have a lot of elderly people who are constantly watching Hoichoi.

That’s the beauty of an OTT platform these days; variety content gets you a wide variety of audience as well.

You clocked unprecedented viewership growth to the tune of 200% during lockdown; are you still holding on to that kind of growth even in the unlock phase?

Unlock saw a remarkable increase in viewership and in spite of seeing a drop as Unlock 1.0 started we are still clocking a viewership that is more than pre Covid times and I would say and it is still a very big number.

COVID expedited the move to digital by two years, if not more.  The audience who were not sure about making the shift to digital has also come on board during this time. So each and every show/film/production we have on the platform has a unique set of audience.

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