MUMBAI: The OTT industry has been able to evade a large chunk of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic with users thronging to streaming services for entertainment during lockdown.

SVF-backed Bengali OTT service Hoichoi is also witnessing the sudden growth of paid subscribers, new users and engagement at a 4-5x rate. While there is a worry of churning new content as shootings have paused, Hoichoi is working to keep its story bank ready with more focus on pre-production right now to have a quick pick up after the crisis is over.

In an interview with Indiantelevision.com, Hoichoi co-founder Vishnu Mohta speaks on how the situation has worked in the platform’s favour, how its content team is working and how the teams are coordinating effectively during work from home.

Edited excerpts:

How has the current situation unfolded for Hoichoi?

Hoichoi is growing very fast. We have noticed a 4-5x growth in a lot of metrics overall, from the subscriber point of view, from an engagement point of view and from the number of new people coming on the platform. To be accurate, we have seen a 5X growth from paid-subscription point of view. 

But the worry is that there's not going to be enough series that are going to be ready because West Bengal was first to stop all shootings and we went into lockdown even before the national lockdown. So there has not been much shooting during March and April. So, which new shows will be launched and how will you launch them?

Have you noticed any particular demographic consuming more content during this lockdown?

Everyone is watching equally, but the interesting thing is that there are so many people in the 50-plus age group who are also at home and watching it on devices like Amazon Firestick. That's a very interesting demographic. So, I think, now, Hoichoi is becoming a platform for everyone. Some people want to see old movies, some people want to see new movies while some people want to see original shows. 

We have launched something called Live TV also so that people don't have to browse on other apps and say on Hoichoi all day. We have curated the best movies that we have on Live TV and we have created different TV channels out of it.

How is the coordination taking place between your teams?

We are working fairly well actually. Being a digital company, most of our content, documents have always been on Microsoft Teams which is meant for remote working. We already have teams in the US and Gurgaon, etc. So it's not been too much of a big effort.

We get on a call every alternate day for one to two hours in the morning and everybody talks about what they're up to such as challenges, dependencies, etc. So, there is a little bit of interaction, also, in that virtual conference where all the team leaders are present. And different teams get on a call every day between themselves. So it's working out good.

I think it also helps to be away from the office because you have fewer interruptions. People are more productive and they are working to the point and trying to get the job done.

What are the key areas you are focusing on currently?

We are working on customer happiness a lot, technical changes and innovations like Live TV. We have added some free-to-air channels. We are trying to create as much engagement channels as possible. In fact, we had seven or eight world digital premieres during this lockdown period. We have been lucky that we had that much content available that we could premiere on Hoichoi for the first time. 

Are you planning to push some of your premium content to TV channels as those are running out of fresh content?

We have discussed with a few people, but it's not something that we can announce at this stage. We have had discussions with Star, Zee and all these bands, but a deal has not been signed yet. But, on our platform, we have made a lot of content, including some new ones, free.

Are you looking at easier payment gateways as more subscribers hop on board?

We are going to start Google Pay very shortly. We never used to support Google Pay seamlessly. You could do UPI always, but now we have enabled an ability to pay via Google Pay in a much smoother manner because you don't even have to put in your UPI ID. We are launching referral programs where a subscriber can refer Hoichoi to a friend and both will get one month extra subscription. 

How are you scripting shows now and ideating future projects?

It's time for us to make sure that we finish scripting faster for all the content that we want to make so that pre-production can be better than ever. And we will try to gear up as much as possible so that when it opens our shoot can start immediately when it is safe enough to do it. We have also managed to create a story bank for the next six months already. So, instead of setting two or three shoots at a time, we will start four to six. After this gap period of probably two months, it will go back to normalcy maybe and then we will activate multiple teams to do multiple jobs at one go.

Will you be looking at cutting down budgets given that a significant part of the year has been eaten up by the crisis? Will there be lay-offs for cost-cutting?

We don't know yet about our budget.  It is very difficult to predict at this point. We are just taking one step at a time. Right now the business is up and we are in a growth phase. Another thing we have announced is that we're going to give a percentage of our subscription revenue earned during this period to various entities like the PM CARES, CM relief fund, Bangladesh relief fund, etc. However, there will be no lay-offs at Hoichoi.