MUMBAI: He ran a successful DTH business in Videocon d2h up until it was merged with Dish TV. And now he’s off to establish an independent identity. Former Videocon d2h CEO Anil Khera has set up his own company One Take Media (OTM) that specialises in content production, global content acquisition and distribution, providing value added services (VAS) to global DTH/cable TV and OTT platforms.
As per data published by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), the Indian DTH industry has around 8-10 million VAS subscribers availing the services in some form. DTH alone generates around $80 million as annual VAS revenue which is bound to touch $200 million by the year 2020. Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, Khera says that there are still gaps to be filled as far as content is concerned which is available on platforms such as OTT, DTH and cable. “We are identifying that gap and we are introducing that as the VAS services,” he says.
The company sees kids’ genre as the fourth largest after movies, entertainment and others and plans to launch a channel in the near future. “I have a long term plan to start a kids’ channel as we have a very sufficient library for kids’ content,” he says.
Khera said that he has kept one library separately for the channel and it will contain both original and acquired content. He denied disclosing the production houses that OTM has acquired the content from due to the NDA agreement with them. He said, “We have acquired the content from various Indian and foreign production houses. We have our own IP in animation rhymes which is called Nyra World and as far as languages are concerned, we will be looking at the largest sector which is the Hindi speaking market,” he explains.
Premium content from foreign countries will be dubbed and shown in Hindi. The initial experiment will be to offer both acquired and original content to understand the audience. OTM has Kids1st TV, a channel targeting 2-6 years of kids, Cartoony TV--TV series in comedy, entertainment and adventure for the kids in the age group of 4-11 years old and Cartoony Movies for all age groups.
Khera says the company is working with telecom clients based in Africa and MENA region besides OTT customers in Singapore and Malaysia. In India, it is working with Dish TV. “There are several telecom companies around the world. We have Indonesia Telecom where they have their app and MENA region telecom like Ooredoo. We are also in discussion with Etisalat and in Nigeria, we have the telecom company called Tingo for our kids and cooking content (The Great Indian Global Kitchen) that we own the IP for,” he reveals.
Recently in India, the company signed a content deal with multi system operator (MSO) and headend in the sky (HITS) platform IndusInd Media and Communications Ltd (IMCL) to launch VAS. As part of the partnership, OTM will provide ad-free and unique content to IMCL subscribers. The subscription-based services are available to all InDigital subscribers. The unique services from OTM include animated cartoon series in Hindi for various age groups of kids across three services, nursery rhymes, TV series and animated Hindi movies. Other services are celebrity chef-based cooking shows, songs and Bhojpuri, Tamil and Telugu movies. Other unique services also include Hollywood and South Indian movies dubbed in Hindi.
Khera said that as far as Hollywood cooking content is concerned, the company is in talks with Airtel DTH. Also being the first company to dub Turkish and Korean content in Hindi, he feels that there is a great pull for this content. “We want to provide the global content experience to the Indian customers. There is no demand as such but being in the media company for so many years, I believe it has a great pull,” he says.
