Home Digital OTT Exclusive | Nitin Jai Shukla, OMTV: We want to tell stories of… DigitalOTT Exclusive | Nitin Jai Shukla, OMTV: We want to tell stories of Indian heroes and cultural glory in a contemporary manner

In an exclusive interaction, Nitin Jai Shukla, Founder and Managing Director at OMTV, speaks about how OMTV is catering to a spiritually inclined nation like India to meet its demand for cultural content. He outlines the insight behind the launch of OMTV and charts its journey. He also speaks about OMTV’s focus on the digital space and outlines the platform’s content strategy for 2022. Read on.

Give us an overview of OMTV and its journey so far?

Nothing is permanent but stories will remain forever. The right authentic storytelling of our culture is missing in the Indian OTT space. The tag line of our OTT platform is ‘Gyan bhi, Garv bhi. A default destination for stories of Sanatan culture for a spiritually inclined nation like India to meet its demand for the cultural content.

OMTV is a media-tech company and we are catering to the next generation who have a lot of questions about our culture and they are not getting the right answers. We aim to be relevant in today’s times and be rooted to our culture and beliefs.

OMTV is a freemium OTT platform. Initially for the first year it will be free and from second year the subscription fees will be 294/year. Some of the content will be available for free and the premium content will be available in the subscription model.

The journey so far has been very exciting from the idea of having a platform to seeing it finally happening is in itself a big dream come true. The idea germinated during the pandemic with only few people believing in it and then slowly the team grew and like-minded people came together.

We did our logo launch from Malakaal temple Ujjain and it was the first ever outdoor event to happen in the temple premise in the last 100 years. I guess it was the divine intervention of lord Mahadev which made it all possible. Then our app went live on android and IOS in Aug 2021 with a soft launch in Mumbai.

Now from understanding the tech aspect of the business along with content and also the marketing part which is equally important is a big learning experience and I guess I’m still learning.

Also, from research to the content production, the app crashes, event coverage, some set-backs, partnerships and finally closing the seed funding round, all of this has been a roller coaster ride. I think we have just started the ride and the journey has just begun.

What was the insight behind the launch of OMTV? How has the company grown since its launch?

There is no default destination for a religiously inclined nation like India to meet its demand for the cultural content. Be it mythology, history, family values or culture, everything is scattered and we fill the need gap. There are many “bhakti”, “religious” platforms but they are all into pravachan, darshan, bhajan etc space but none in the story telling space. We want to tell stories of Indian heroes and its cultural glory in a contemporary manner.

We are nearing 10K subscribers since the launch. We have associations with animation studios and film studios for their content library. We are amongst the top viewed pages on short video apps, like Josh and Chingari.

We have a strong social media presence from Instagram to Facebook to Youtube. We have just closed our seed funding round and are looking forward to the next round of funding. We are ready with our big ticket show with a production value of 15cr+(season 1), which will be the flagship show for our relaunch. We intend to come with 2000 hrs of acquired content library along with original shows.

With a crowded OTT space, how has OMTV distinguished itself from its competitors?

Well, it’s a cliché but OMTV is one of its kind and first in the genre. If I say I don’t have any direct competition so it will not be completely untrue. But yes, we have similar content available on a lot of platforms, like YouTube has all kinds of content and other OTT as well have some shows in this space but a default destination for this genre is not there so as of now, I can say there is no competition.

If we broaden the horizon and include all content providing an OTT platform then the content genre is what makes us unique and what we offer exclusively is something which makes us stand apart from the crowd.

Spending 1 hour on OMTV for any kid or any person, watching anything on this platform will either give him/her some gyan (knowledge) or garv(pride) about this culture. This is something which is unique as compared to other international OTT where most of the content is only for entertainment and not fit for family viewing.

What are/were the viewership trends you witnessed in this category in 2021-22?

This genre doesn’t need a proof of concept and it has always been relevant in India since the time immemorial. We are a very spiritually inclined nation and whenever such films or shows come on any platform it has always worked.

A satellite channel will always launch with a historical or mythological show to attract the masses and same with films like Bahubali or RRR in recent times. Also, Ramayan re-telecast broke all records of viewership during the pandemic. So, the trends have always been in the favor of this genre, it’s just that we have to make the right content and reach out to the audience with the right technology.

What are OMTV’s criteria for picking up content that resonates with the audiences?

The only filter that we have is Gyan bhi, garv bhi which is our tagline. Any content which gives you gyan or garv is fit for OMTV. It can be contemporary content like Gita stories series on our platform where the most liked story is of Dr. Abdul Kalam Azad he was the 11th president of India and most loved person in India with zero haters and he came from a very humble background and used to say “what you think is what you become” and that is also chapter 17 verse 3 of Gita.

So subconsciously his life philosophy was also resonating with Gita ka gyan. We took an incident from his life and made a short film on it and it resonated with our viewers. So being Indian, having some good knowledge, some entertainment is what we offer and time and again we have seen proof of concept for this kind of content, hopefully it will work with us as well.

What have been some of OMTV’s best properties, titles that did exceptionally well?

Gita stories is our prime property but puppet stories and animation shows are the most loved and watched. These are all moral values stories from Hitopdesh, Panchatantra and Jatak stories which are like bed time stories. I guess young parents would want to tell these stories to their kids and that is the reason it has done exceptionally well.

The chair is another property which has done well for us mostly because Rajesh Kumar (Roshesh) the famous actor from Sarabhai vs Sarabhai has anchored the show and it has given simple knowledge which is imparted by elders to the next generation. The sheer concept is very unique and people have loved seeing elders talk in a candid manner with Rajesh.

Also, the right analysis would be our presence on short video app josh and chingari where we have put 1 min informative video on the rituals or festivals or music or any quotes and that has been picked up by the youth. Apart from the regular entertainment that they see on these short video apps we have a huge traction on our neat clean content. Josh and Chingari both very big platforms approached us for the collaboration and in a few days we were in their top performing pages.

Tell us about OMTV’s marketing and communication approach? Which channels do you choose for marketing? What is your marketing and media mix?

Right now, we are focusing only on social media, all our marketing spends are divided mostly on the Facebook, Instagram, Google ads and then we are on other short video apps.

Soon when we will re-launch with our flag shop show we will have a 360-degree media plan with outdoor, print, TV ad spots and ooh and social media. OTT audience is on social media and we will be focusing on digital marketing as we think our main target audience base is on digital but yes, our collaborations with telecoms are also in the pipeline in near future.

What is OMTV’s content strategy for 2022? Any new properties in the pipeline?

We have planned two big ticket shows for the first year and out of which one is ready with a production value of 15cr+,6-episode series for the first season. On the second show we have taken rights of the book of this famous personality and the preproduction is in process and we will be launching the second one after 3 months of the first show.

The regular free content will be available along with syndicated content. We will also be tying up with a lot of mandirs for live darshan and also with satellite channels.

Our unique proposition of generating UGC (user generated content) is also into testing and we are going ahead with it in the next phase of launch, so a lot of things are in the pipeline.

What are your plans going forward… Top priorities for 2022?

We aim to achieve the right numbers in terms of viewership and subscriptions. We want to achieve our target of becoming the default destination in this genre.

We want to bring a positive change in society by creating good quality content which resonates with kids and youth of this country. We also aim to get the next level of funding for our expansion plans.

Anything else you would like to add?

Discussing religion or spirituality is not very popular and can go in a direction which has been very old school but it is the need of the hour. Spirituality has been pushed as an older generation thing but it’s actually the need of kids and youth, the right kind of society will only be developed when we implement our Vedic knowledge into our everyday life. That doesn’t mean you leave modernity as that is also very important.

One needs to accept modernity and yet have your roots intact. We should not try to ape the west completely; we should embrace it in a balanced manner. Our ancient culture has been very scientific and we need to be proud about it, under the sanatan umbrella we have for Hinduism, Jainism Buddhism and Sikhism and there are enough stories of these sanatan cultures from which we can benefit ourselves and get our future secured.

OMTV will be the default destination for any kind of temple darshan, yatras, religious travel events and also well researched story telling content. The web series on OMTV will be at par with any other top OTT platforms.

Exclusive | Nitin Jai Shukla, OMTV: We want to tell stories of Indian heroes and cultural glory in a contemporary manner