In plain language

A handful of small, profitable players is shaping the streaming business beyond Hindi

- VANITA KOHLI-KHANDEKAR

Kaand 2010 is based on the caste violence that rocked Mirchpur, Haryana, that year. To watch this Haryanvi series, streaming on Stage, you have to first pay ₹399 for a three-month subscription, and answer this multiple-choice question: "What is your culture?" The options are Haryanvi, Bhojpuri, and Rajasthani—the three languages in which Stage claims to offer about 600 hours of programming currently.

The hope is to expand it to 18 languages or dialects, including Maithili, Bundeli, Awadhi and Marathi, over the next five years, says the OTT platform's cofounder and Chief Executive Officer Vinay Singhal.

In March this year, Stage raised over ₹100 crore in a Series B funding round, led by Goodwater Capital, Blume Ventures, and others. The idea is to scale up from its current 4.4 million subscribers to 70-80 million.

"Language OTT subscriptions have not been increasing for over a year. Therefore, what OTTs like Hoichoi, Stage and Aha do now is important," says Shailesh Kapoor, CEO, Ormax Media, a Mumbai-headquartered media consultancy.

This round of capital Stage raised points to the evolution of language OTTs. It is an expression of investor confidence in a smaller, focused space that now has a handful of established players.

"Aha, Hoichoi, Stage have built viable paid subscription models by leveraging deep knowledge of local tastes and production ecosystems," points out Mihir Shah, vice president, Media Partners Asia.

Local and original

In 2020, just a year after Stage, came Aha, a Telugu language streaming app, which now stands at 2.5 million subscribers.