“MEDIA FUTURE IS IN MARRYING CREATORS WITH COMMUNITIES AND COMMERCE”

Mobile and data access led democratisation is the foundation on which a plethora of disruptive ideas are being built and here lies tremendous opportunity for media to emerge as a massive industry, in a new avatar. Sai Kumar, Founder, Arré cites the example of how going regional in the past needed to have a linear market wise approach, but today technology enables language adoption at a pace and cost that is disruptive in itself. “Layer this with millions of new creators, sticky digital communities led by technology and avenues of monetisation beyond advertising and this could actually be media’s finest hour,” he tells BW Businessworld. Excerpts:

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Among the media startups that have attracted investments, do you see any underlying characteristic? Is there a particular type of media startup that attracts more attention?

The short answer to that is that any kind of disruption in the way audiences are built and monetised will build disproportional value. The longer answer lies in carefully analysing the trends that we already see around us in global markets whether it’s the live shopping offering of Taobao or the content subscription service of Onlyfans or Patreon, where a tech-led product has birthed new habits of content creation and consumption.

At Arré, we began our journey with digital entertainment content that was primarily monetised by branded content and advertising and then we moved onto monetisation by working along with OTT platforms (Arré Studio), currently a billion-dollar market expected to double every few years. The next step for us which will be unveiled soon is what we believe would be the future of the media business which is marrying creators with communities and commerce.

How are you seeing consumer behaviour change on the whole that is fuelling the growth of media startups?