Homegrown OTT platform, ALTBalaji completes three years in the business today, 16 April. The platform and ALTBalaji and Balaji Telefilms’ boss Ekta Kapoor has thanked audience for the support.
With an extensive, diverse content library that spans across multiple genres, ALTBalaji has created a niche for itself in the original content space and inculcating binge-watching habit amongst Indian audiences.
ALTBalaji has also emerged as one of the fastest-growing homegrown platforms with more than 60 originals to its name and continue its record in the coming future.
Speaking on ALTBalaji’s third anniversary, ALTBalaji CEO and Balaji Telefilms Group COO Nachiket Pantvaidya said, “Since its inception, ALTBalaji has served as one of the flag bearers for good original content and shall continue to do so. Being from the house of Balaji Telefilms, who have been catering to the audiences’ ever-changing preferences for over 25 years now, ALTBalaji has an advantage like no other of having a deeper understanding and familiarity with the viewer’s consumption preferences. By constantly working on an effective content strategy to cater to individuals, we aim to ramp up our original offerings at an exciting pace. Our core focus right now is to capture the Hindi speaking market through our innovative content offerings along with expanding our regional language content library in the coming years. As we set sights towards breaking even in this new year, we shall continue to keep our viewer as the focal point, build our strategies around them and cement our position as a market leader in the industry.”
ALTBalaji has today become a major player in the Indian OTT industry and gains further encouragement by the massive spike in subscribers. The VOD platform has consistently been ranked No.3 in the list of Top Grossing Video Streaming Apps in the country across the app store, according to App Annie.
Adopting a completely different strategy in terms of content creation, partnerships or marketing, ALTBalaji has seen profitability. Witnessing their costs getting controlled in the first half of fiscal 2020 and the loss margin further reducing at the end of the current fiscal, the platform aims to break even in 2020-21.
The platform has reached out to all kinds of audiences across the length and breadth of the country through a healthy mix of thriller, drama, romance, teenage drama, horror, comedy among others. Laying impetus towards growing its regional subscriber base, it has a host of its Hindi offerings dubbed in Indian and International languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bahasa, Arabic and more.
In their endeavour to further engage the audience and offer them an immersive viewing experience, ALTBalaji is also working towards strengthening its UI/UX by focusing on aspects like language interface, voice search, targeted retention strategies, tailored recommendations, quick onboarding, and convenient payment gateways.
ALTBalaji has also started the trend of original soundtracks in the web-series space. In addition, it has launched some interesting and innovative initiatives and campaigns like – ‘Breast Buffer’ campaign which was initiated to create awareness against Breast Cancer.
Recently, it partnered with Impact Guru for a fundraising effort ‘One Meal at a Time’ for the distribution of food to the underprivileged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further enhancing the user experience, the OTT platform brought its series Apharan to Alexa enabling its users to now listen to dialogues, the trailer and other exclusive content from this successful show. Fans can enjoy the immersive experience provided by the suspense thriller, with just a simple voice command.
This year also saw a number of ALTBalaji shows garner good reviews from audiences and critics alike. Mentalhood, the recently-launched drama on parenthood, earned a 8.9 rating on IMDb. On the other hand, Mission Over Mars (M-O-M), received a rating of 8.6, the thriller-suspense and courtroom drama Code M and The Verdict – State Vs. Nanavati received a rating of 8.3 and 8.6 respectively.
In this COVID lockdown period, ALTBalaji has launched shows like Who’s Your Daddy? and XXX Uncensored Season 2. ALTBalaji will continue to do so with plans to launch almost 25 to 30 shows this year including Kehne Ko Humsafar Hai 3, Baarish 2, Bebaakee, Mumbhai, Apharan 2 and many more.
We wish ALTBalaji a happy birthday! #ALTturns3