THE ALCHEMY OF ALT BALAJI

How a homegrown OTT platform from one of the biggest production houses of the country has managed to become an important player in the web space, rubbing shoulders with global giants

- JIGAR SHAH

All of us are familiar with the classic tale of David Vs Goliath. Times may have changed, but some things remain the same. On one hand, there are international players like Disney Plus Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and on the other are players supported by broadcast networks such as Zee Network (Zee 5), Sony (Sony Liv) and Viacom 18 (Voot). And then, there is an Indian homegrown OTT player up against more than 30 players with varying subscriber base and popularity.

ALT Balaji.

TV queen Ekta Kapoor’s OTT platform, ALT Balaji, recently celebrated its third anniversary with a cumulative subscriber base of 40 million users. As per their financial report, the platform has nearly 1.7 million paying active users. We take a look at what worked for ALT Balaji and how it has been able to amass such a huge subscriber base.

ALT Balaji offers over 60 original shows in Hindi and this is one of its major strengths. Speaking about their strategy, Divya Dixit SVP - Marketing, Analytics and Direct Revenue at ALT Balaji, says it’s the in-house expertise of Kapoor, who has been producing Hindi language content for over 25 years now. “If you look at Indian demographics, 70 per cent of content consumed is in Hindi. So, as a platform, it makes sense to focus our efforts in that direction and win over the Hindi-speaking population. Once we achieve it, we can establish our supremacy in the OTT landscape and hopefully start to add more avenues. This year, we are focusing primarily on consolidating our position to ensure that we dominate the Hindi space and move forward,” she says.