MUMBAI: Streamers in India are about to get new delight. YouTube is bringing its first Indian original in the coming weeks called ARRived under an ad-supported model. The streaming giant has joined hands with music maestro AR Rahman for the show. Earlier also, YouTube global head original programming Susanne Daniels said that it is planning scripted series and original programming for international markets including India.
"Affordable data costs are driving video consumption in India, data usage is about 8 GB a month per subscriber. This has pushed online video consumption as well, which is now about 75 per cent of all mobile traffic as per industry reports," YouTube India entertainment head Satya Raghavan said.
While in many countries YouTube offers its originals under the subscription model, in India it doesn’t have any premium model currently. According to some media reports, it will eventually come up with the premium service in India. YouTube’s international rivals Netflix and Amazon Prime have already released original shows in the country, some of which has been critically acclaimed too along with getting high popularity. The local OTT players are also eyeing the same pie in the growing video market. Players like ZEE5, Voot, ALTBalaji, Viu, Eros Now also have a pipeline of original shows to woo the audience. On the other hand, Hotstar has taken the top position among OTT players according to several reports.
“Our DNA is built around partnerships, so a lot of competitors are our partners we work closely with, some of them are large advertisers of ours, some of them are large content partners. So for us, it is about growing the video pie not just for our own creators but for the entire online video industry for sure,” Raghavan commented.
The company said it had run two sponsored shows as pilots, working closely with advertisers to test the market. It also claimed to have received a good response. Globally, YouTube Originals has released over 60 projects to date and plans to release more than 50 new shows next year.
