 Even when celebrity drug related controversies are making the rounds, MX Player has released a rather topical show called Hi, on the plight of drug addicts which has been getting great reviews. We have with us Karan Bedi, CEO of MX Player to discuss MX originals and more. Hi Karan. Hi Ida, thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. You know tell me 18 months ago you made a 1000 crore acquisition and set out on a journey to make a video playback app into one of the top 40 players in the country. Tell me what were your biggest worries back then and what has been the biggest speed breaker that you came up in front of you in these past 18 months? So I think at that time the thesis was very simple that you had this large base of users that were interested in watching in video and our aim was to make sure that we could get them to watch video that was you know streamed by us rather than video that they downloaded and I think that that thesis has worked out very well. We are the largest OTT in India today and have been consistently for the last you know almost six months and so I think that that thesis has been very very well proven. I think we very much hit our goal. Frankly we've exceeded our goal. We had the vision to be the largest but we also didn't think it would happen this quickly. I think that we had a slightly longer term framework in mind but we certainly exceeded it and I think that you know it's been done on the back of of starting from scratch. You know we had you know we didn't have any TV network backing us you know obviously you know the time group brings a lot of media muscle into the into the business but it is primarily a news group not a entertainment group so I think that but this support has been fantastic and I think between you know our teams and our shareholders we managed to really sort of hit it out of the park. You spoke about billing it from scratch so let's try and break it down. Tell me how many monthly active users did your OTT platform have on day one you know you had about 175 million monthly active users on your video playback app when you acquired it. So how many of them stayed when you you know converted it into an OTT app right in the first month or two. So you know interestingly our thesis was you know we started off obviously with the local player and then we introduced video streaming then we realized that you know we did a whole bunch of sort of analytics on the user base and what they were consuming and so on and we realized that there's a lot of demand for music. So a few months after we launched it around the time when we did the formal you know formal launch of the OTT we also realized that music is something that's pretty important to us so we started working out a completely full-fledged music service within MX in partnership with our affiliate company that's Ghana and then further going forward we saw that you know there was again we started seeing demand on the same user base for gaming. We saw that there were a lot of shows that sorry there were a lot of users that were consuming you know gaming apps and gave an interest in gaming that were on MX. So the next thing we did is we introduced the gaming platform the casual gaming platform on MX towards the end of 2019 but I think in all of these we had a very clear vision that we wanted to build you know products on the platform that were relevant to our users and in each of those products we are now a market leader so it wasn't just a sort of random thing of saying okay there's a user base here we download here we download here we download it was very clearly focused on creating a value proposition where we found that the user wanted to do different things on entertainment at different parts of his day so whether it was using the existing MX player you know at some point of time to video streaming to audio streaming to gaming and now most recently a lot two months ago we launched Takata which is our short video platform when we saw that opportunity so we continue to have a set of users that interact with different parts of the app at different times of the day and and overall both the user base and the engagement level per user has shot up over the last year and a bit so that thesis I'm saying that you know some of parts is much bigger than the individual individual services has played out very well okay but but how many retain were you able to retain in the first initial 175 for the platform today overall including everything is more than you know it's closer to 20 actually now it's a very large jump that's happened even and for it's not easy it's not a jump at that number to begin with but so you've seen a very big jump that's happened across different across our different sort of media and this this concept of every day in a minute has not only helped us expand our user base but also absolutely further retained and re-engaged our existing user base that we had at the time. So as for app Annie and you know by your own admission you're the number one app you know ODD app in the country today so you know this has happened in a in a course of 80 months so what is the next big goal in front of you? I think it would be premature to say that we are there yet you know there I think there's two parts to looking at this today I think in India there are about you know the numbers change every day but there's probably about 500 or million you know 4G connected smartphones and now smart TVs are becoming pretty popular right the COVID has certainly accelerated the adoption of that but you'll see in the next few years smart TVs are going to become pretty popular so I think that there's still potentially I think in the next year or four years you will have you know maybe somewhere in the range of 750 to 800 million broadband connected screens between smartphones, smart TVs you know tablets is not a huge category in India but you know certainly whatever small category that is on tablets and PCs and whatever so I think that we very much think that in in three four years that out of the 750-800 million we expect to be on at least 500 million of those connected screens so I think that you know while it's you know currently we are 200 odd I think there's there's room to more than double that in the next three four years and we fully expect to be on a large percentage very large majority of that of that screen then and I think that I'd like to point out that you know when we talk about our numbers we are very clearly focused on actual users on our apps and websites you know these days there's a lot of noise in the market about DAUs and MAUs and you know you know the all kinds of things you know these embeds and my web app is embedded in someone's app and this that the other all this all this stuff happens you know in our view it is only one way to define a DAU or an MAU which is that someone has come to an owned and operated property by you your app or your website on your on a phone or a PC or a TV that's the only way we define it and that's the way we look at numbers so we think that with you know like I said somewhere in the range of 750 to 800 million connected screens we want to be on more than 500 I wanted to compare MX with the hot star which was has been the number one otherwise you know hot star may have had the first user advantage but they literally had to build the user base from scratch for you it was more about retaining the existing users after conversion so tell me which was more challenging which is which according to you is more challenging you know building something from scratch or you know keeping the existing users as interested as they were so remember we also built from scratch in the sense that you know I think I mean what's the first year I haven't heard it to them there's a great company right they've done a great job and they've been now at it for for about five years I think I was I think they launched in 2015 if I'm not wrong early 2015 so just over five years and I think they've done a great job but I think the one thing you have to always remember about them or anybody else is that in the broadcaster space is that they came into the picture with a huge amount of content available to them we are nothing we built everything a bit of our content from scratch whether it was stuff that we whether it's stuff that we created whether it's stuff to be licensed or bought it was a very very important thing so I think that yes of course while distribution we had a big leg up but it's it's not you know distribution and and content are two equally important parts of the of the business so I wouldn't say it was any easier for us or them I think everyone has their own journey and you know I'm just happy that we've done really well and you know managed to get to that spot. You know today you've grown into an every tenement platform you know who would have thought that you would branch out so quickly in a year of slowdown now tell me was that always a plan to be you know so aggressive in 2020 or did COVID just accelerate the expansion? So no it was always it was always an aggressive year for us so I would say again I mentioned you earlier we started with with the local player then we went to video then we went to music and you went to gaming and now on to short video and in every single one of them this was a studied view as into saying that we believe that consumers want consumers want 15 apps in India for 15 different things there is a homogeneity that you can create with a super app in a particular area now we didn't think a generic super app I mean there's been talk about generic super apps which says oh you know you put everything from taxis to shopping to video to food delivery all in one app we don't think that is super likely scenario but in media itself within let's say entertainment or every tenement as we like to call it we had a thesis saying that people will want something that they can interact in different parts of the day whether you have five minutes available to you or you have one hour available to you or you have the same app that you know cross links between the different products and that's what every tenement is and I think it's done really well for us so we always have the view of going down this road I think COVID certainly gave us a lot of confidence in being able to enable being able to take some of those bets more aggressively because we just saw usage just skyrocket so much we certainly got a lot of confidence in being more aggressive though let's talk about some of these newly launched categories now gaming you launched it just in time before the gaming boom in the country just before COVID I mean there was a pure luck I guess so tell me how has it grown in the past eight months and to what extent has it started contributing to MX players over all their games so I wouldn't say it's luck I think we've been we've been saying this for some time that gaming is a very important part of a very important part of something called current media is just connected to this I don't know what happened there um now I'm saying that gaming has certainly been a very important part of the portfolio from day one we've always known that this is something that uh we want to uh be in we've always known that it's been a big opportunity and we started rolling out our gaming platform in in sort of Jan of this year like just in sort of beta phase so we were well well ahead of the first time I ever heard the word COVID very frankly was mid-Jan at which point of time we didn't know when you're as as big a deal as it is today I mean it was just like oh you know there's some new thing has popped up somewhere in China or whatever it was but but I think that we knew the potential I think what ended up happening was that that potential was accelerated by probably a few years and today gaming is a very big part of the platform and gaming is is very useful for a few different ways one is definitely very engaging right so people who spend time giving people who actually you know our gamers casual gamers spend time giving actually spend a lot of time it's a high engagement platform it's for clients it's very very useful as well because it's one of the best platforms for advertising so while in video or in display you show an ad and the person is okay I need to watch this ad to continue on with my video right because you know india's did a very a word friendly market still not super friendly on s4 on gaming is the opposite you want more ads because you want those ads lead to different positive outcomes in your game so if you want an extra life or you want a power up or you want some kind of plus point in your game the option is to either buy it or to watch an ad so in our case we follow the ad so we actually found customers coming to us and saying hey I didn't get the opportunity to see one more ad and get one more power up and I'm like wow you know your customer is asking so for clients this is very very important because you know if you truly want your band to resonate with an audience the right place to put it is where people are actually in a very very friendly manner so you know and we do this and we end up doing this across our platform so you know today we've got clients where we sell our what we call our sort of every tenement pack so to speak or our every tenement package where you can come on as a client you can get impact inventory on on video and on display and you can get a lot of high engagement people you know getting retargeted with that inventory on gaming where people again like I said people want ads people want to participate more and view it so it's actually really positive rub off on the brand so I think that that's worked out well so it's been a it's been a very positive thing both for our engagement and for our revenue growth but overall how much do you see it contribute by next year where makes his revenues considering it's a ad friendly app I think gaming is going to be a very important part I mean I'm not I'm not going to give you a percentage point right now it's too early to really say but it will be a significant part I think that gaming is a very very important part of the mix and like I said more and more what we're explaining to our to our clients and I think clients are really resonating with this is that you need to be able to target the user at different points of time in this day in different modes you don't want to only display or only video you want people to come in and be able to see your brand and to be able to engage with your brand in different ways so for example you got one client who does a lot of work on video a lot of you know business for us on video does really well for them and you said look why don't you also start putting a little bit of of spend on the gaming side and they've had a it's definitely had a sort of one plus one is more than two impact because you've got people watching that brand in their ads on video and we get them a little bit to have slightly different different creatives right I mean in video you have your sort of 10 seconds or 20 seconds 30 second films on gaming you can be a little bit more creative you obviously have you continue to have your 10 20 30 second films but you have a lot more immersive vertical formats you have a lot more interesting formats you can integrate within the game and then now of course the latest one is on Taka Taka again we've scaled that really fast and again it's a super super high engagement platform that again brands really love so you you know Mx is now the only place in the country where if you want you want impact you want reach you want performance you want engagement you know one-stop shop talk to us and we will we will give you talk to us about what your outcomes are and we will help you fulfill them the right fit but but let me reframe my questions I guess so you know do you see gaming overtake your OTT app as far as advertising is concerned in the near future is that a tall ask we have no we have absolutely no I think on on usage it's not likely video is very very big and it will be on monetization who knows I mean it's a very highly monetizable part of the app and and like I said so I think all power to it we treat every everything equally here so if if you've got if you've got a lot of action happening on that you know that's great we will certainly support it to every end we have no intention of trying to devalue anything we have if you think that the gaming business is showing signs of growing even bigger we'll double down on it well let's let's come to the next one the Takata now the ban on Chinese apps obviously was got sent for a lot of Indian companies including you tell me do you literally see it replace talk in India and how soon so look I think a few different apps popped up right around around that time and I think that we've actually done very well because we've had a couple of different serious advantages right one is that with a lot of our previous year out of the top thousand creators that tick tock had more than half of them have actually come on to talk exclusively so there's a big lot of exclusive content from cool influencers but even more importantly like you know there was a cohort of influencers that emerged out of the tick tock era and now there's a new cohort of influencers that are going to emerge out of our era and I think that is a power of short video that you are able to take you know people who are just you know from ordinary backgrounds and were able to become you know you're able to come sort of famous overnight and I think that's the power of what short video can do and and what we do is we are able to we are able to extend that even further we're able to say okay hey you come on board you not only sort of become popular on tucker duck but then the next step is you start on a mx web show uh in a web series a web series right with some of our key core bollywood talent and then the next step is obviously you know we why we don't make films we certainly have relationships with uh all the major film directors and producers and you know maybe that's the next step that you become a movie star so I think that you know a lot of people's sort of goal in life right so um so I think that we have a very unique thing there and then again just the sheer distribution that mx can bring to the table is basically unparalleled you know we have as I said the largest distribution of any entertainment app in the country frankly outside of the google ecosystem probably with the largest app in the country uh outside of the google and facebook ecosystem so we bring a lot of uh value to our creators so I think tucker duck will do really well and you know why as big as tiktok it will be bigger than tiktok uh one day no fantastic you know and another thing is many experts at this point feel that you know brands have been more active on these short form video apps than mass media even compared to other digital platforms uh do you see uh this this trend continuing in the near future you know after we're completely out of the lockdown do you see influencers becoming bigger than you know mass media like I said we believe all of this is going to be which is why we are all of it we are in the biggest we are on long form video we are on gaming we are on short form video we're on audio so we believe that all of them will play a part in a media plan our goal with our clients is to make sure that whatever parts of the user's life that they want to talk to the user in we are present um so I think that short video is going to be very big I think it will continue to be very big um you know perhaps the influencers today will not be the influencers of tomorrow perhaps there will be perhaps there'll be new ones we don't know but certainly the format is not going anywhere it's a very engaging format that people love uh both users love and brands love and it's there are very unique ways to create brand resonance with uh with short video and but the best thing like I said is this combination across like being able to see a 30 second film or watching a show and being able to play with it during a game in an engaging manner and then doing like a you know one of these you know AR lens filters while you're on short video of the same brand now when you have users watching all of these in tandem and we are able to track them across tandem right so think about it even from a tracking perspective so uh for a client right he knows that someone has seen his ad in three different formats as opposed to okay if he went to youtube and he went to tiktok and he went to you know some gaming company different and how and then he has to you know do all kinds of work to figure out how many of those people who are common how many actually saw didn't see here is one dashboard you figured it all out uh so uh so it's been uh it's been good and I think that short video is gonna be it's gonna continue to be fun so how many users do you have on tiktok uh on takata at this point so you know it's scaled really really fast I mean we're we're we're far north of 10 million daily actives now so uh uh and it's been and like I said when I say daily actives I actually mean people who actually have opened the app none of this embedding blah blah blah blah okay there may be a couple of weeks ago I was speaking to Satya and Gajwani uh you know when you had come up with your til report and he was saying that at this point till date and your priority was to fill the consumer need for entertainment and figuring out new ways to monetize via subscription is going to be an agenda for the next couple of years so how soon will we see mx player premium subscription model come up so I think the way I look at it is that today we still continue to believe that India is largely gonna be an ad-driven media market um whether it's on on on long form video whether it's on short form video whether it's on gaming but obviously as we go forward as the economy starts to grow as as disposable incomes start to rise there will be pockets of demand popping up for excuse me subscription so um so when these pockets of demand start popping up we want to make sure we are there to address them so I think then we will certainly be experimenting with different things uh over the next few quarters uh and and see what it is that we think makes sense but I think that you know our view is that certainly we want to be present to be able to capture these pockets of demand but we also do believe that uh it is going to be uh it's going to be a mixed market every media market in the world has been that for forever it's not as if any media market in the world has only been subscription or only been advertising in fact there are there are few markets that are only advertising very low subscription but there's no market in the world that's only subscription so I think that uh that's the way we think about it I think we will experiment and we'll see whatever's right for whichever kind of user but we we want to make sure that you know we have the largest user base possible and being them being able to consume entertainment since you focused on award of course tell us what is what kind of advertising graph has been for mx player in the past year and by what percentage has it gone up like I said we really we started monetizing the platform really only you know probably seven eight months ago maybe a little longer than that because before that we were really focused on building the scale and the engagement on the platform we like we even I keep forgetting we are not even two years old um that uh you know it seems like it's such a uh it seems it seems it's been longer but we are actually just not even two years old in the market so uh so we focused on the first year and just building out that scale we got there uh we are certainly you know like I said we're the biggest and we started you know aggressively figuring out monetization now on that and so it's been really good like I told you we had two huge months uh in august and september we expected a global member december would be uh you know will continue to be very good months uh we think that again takatak is going to be very big for us gaming is turning out to be very big for us like we talked about subscription products those are also going to start rooting out like I said we'll experiment in the next few quarters as to what those are but you know while we continue to believe what will be the big one there will be demand pockets and subscription that we think are going to emerge as well so I think it's it's it's you know it's very hard to say you know I'm sure you're going to ask me this question at some point I'm saying oh and you guys want to break even etc etc I'll just preempt you uh and tell you that you know who I don't think anyone can predict with certainty and you know whether it'll be four five six or eight quarters down the line but uh but I can tell you for sure uh that even today in the morning this economic times article came out that you know where the where where the consumption goes the money follows and the money started following digital is now bigger than print uh and it's going to be uh and the question of digital tv is sorry or digital advertising revenues surpassing tv are now not a question of f524 f525 now it's a question of will it happen in f521 or 22 so uh so I think that monetization is becoming very strong on on our platforms and and I think that it will become you know it will be whether ads whether subs you know whatever it is and by the way those are not just the only two monetization models there are lots more innovative things that are going to start happening in in digital um I think that you'll see that in the next three four five years you'll see a lot of businesses make a lot of money on digital okay you know but you know talking about the lockdown and how things have turned in this you know one there was this one opportunity where in uh you know big budget films were releasing on ott platforms but mx kind of steered clear of that I mean uh Shakuntila Devi or Lakshmi Babu Gulabo Satabu I mean there were no releases if i'm not wrong on mx players so far why why did you stay away from that I think that we we certainly were not opposed to it in principle but I I think that you need to be very cognizant of what the maths work out to be on this right and some of these things I think were just not working out on the math because uh you know in some cases those films have already you know in some of the platforms that release new films are already paid for the digital rights of those films so they had to pay in my view they had to pay a lot to convert those digital rights into like all rights to do before theatrical but I think it was at that time a win-win situation for them and the and the producer but in general we found that you know the the maths was just not sitting right because you know uh yeah maybe Lakshmi Bomb yeah let's see how that turns out uh it's coming out soon um but I think the the view on on most of them were that you know some of these were really really really large numbers in terms of the economics and it was not fair as to what the outcome would be but I think in general what this did was it opened up the concept of films coming on to more digital first before theatrical and I think that concept is going to continue we chose not to sort of participate we looked at everything we chose not to participate because we didn't think that you know any particular deal construct that was happening at the time at the economic value that was happening suited us but I'm sure that many many more will come will come away and you know today I think day after tomorrow the cinemas are supposed to uh open today see how that also works out over the next few yeah that was actually my next question do you think with the cinemas opening up again you know it's going to steal OTT's thunder not at all the movies happen people love it people want more they can't get enough this is here to stay you can court me on that okay tell me tell me also about you know how you're rising up to the vernacular challenge I mean your your show Queen did really really well so are the others in the pipeline and how many different languages are you in right now Queen was the biggest show ever that has been in Tamil Samantar was one of the biggest shows in Marathi uh that we did in in in May uh we've got we did a Begum in dual language in Marathi and in Hindi we've got a Punjabi show coming out we've had um what do you call it we've got a big uh Telugu show coming out with again dual language Telugu Hindi show coming out with Rangopal Varma uh it was supposed to be our end of this year but obviously think I'm delayed a little bit with Covid so my guess is probably be sometime early next year um but we've got a whole bunch of things happening and we've been we've been on we've been there on on regional from day one because again MX's user base is so large and so well represented across across uh uh all our uh you know geographical spread of India that we want to be very clear that we will not be a you know one language platform we'll certainly be we were on ten languages on day one and we continue to invest in great content on all of these you know another thing I think you did was you know you dubbed soaps from Turkey Latin America Eastern Europe and you know made it into local languages what kind of traction are those getting is that a hit yes huge I think that today we are the largest provider of international content in Indian languages in India um and you know we started off with some Turkish content which did really well with us because you know it's uh you know it resonates in the kind of structural uh sort of structural construct of that content um and then we expanded that to different parts of the world uh we've got content from Latin America we've got content from you know other parts of the Middle East you've got content from Eastern Europe you've got a lot of content that we think is relevant to India and dubbed it not just in Hindi but in regional languages as well and tell me you also expanded to other markets apart from India so which uh what kind of user base do you have in these markets you said 220 MAU in India itself so we've got we've got a whole bunch of other smaller markets we've gotten into we're present in Bangladesh and Nepal in um in the UAE we're present in Shilanka so there's a whole bunch of different markets around the world we're starting to get into and in very early days yet but you know without I'm not going to go into the details but in one or two of them we are already the number one OTT so I think again we took a lot of advances of picking those markets well figuring out where we where we could go in what the positioning in those markets could be and where we could take leadership position so uh I think that's the strategy that we're going out with so some of those markets but tell me how do you differentiate MX from the other players in the market today sony live hotstar z5 I mean today I just look at the sheer size I mean today we are you know we are uh uh I mean multiples because in it pretty much everybody has buying buying hotstar which is you know where we have we're ahead of them but not sort of as much further ahead as we are some of the others and because that they've got sports so hotstar sports and their premium coordinate is English everyone else is content you know someone's got without naming names you mean someone's got three originals someone's got five originals someone's got eight originals we've got more than 60 over the last couple of years whatever year and a half and that's what's happening I think the the the move away from TV content to content specifically created for these audiences like I like we call them the mass mobile millennial these audiences don't have anything to watch on TV so you have for them you know buying one or two game shows and things like that you know certain bits of content work but the bulk of TV content is not geared towards like I said the mobile mass millennial um and and we are creating content you know specifically for them so I think that that's been our big differentiator and and we are every day in mind I think that every day in my proposition is very very powerful uh they want that and I mean I I you know there's nobody else out there that's even you endure it so you now have gaming uh short form video ott what next how does every payment packet get complete package get completed we also have music at the moment which of course will continue to to grow and I think look as I said I mean you know we'll continue to find adjacencies we we don't necessarily just believe we should just add products onto it just to increase the increase the sort of spread I think we'll see how users react to different parts of this this platform and see what parts of it makes sense and what parts of it resonate and what parts of it create engagement both for users and you know on the other hand we'll also understand how our clients think about it and that basis will think of where to expand and you know where to bolster up but I think these and these four four five products that we have today we are the the the key thing for us is that everything we enter we want uh we want to be sure that a we have a very good defensible advantage what we call us sort of right to win and be that we have a good shot uh of path to number one in a reasonable time frame uh no one becomes number one overnight or anything but we have a reasonable shot at at path to number one this is something we achieved in and all the things we've launched and also we continue to believe that as we go forward there'll be opportunities to do to take the same thesis and repeat it okay and let's conclude with your uh you know the recent most so high so it's it's got perfect timing things are happening in the world of news and it's just happened to badly run with that so was this timed accordingly or uh was it supposed to always come around at this time I don't know I think it was you know as you know these shows take a lot of time to to create right so this has been in the works for a long time now um but uh I think that certainly uh fortuitous timing in the sense that it was started to become a part of subject that was being widely talked about and I think that it you know when you see it and I encourage all of your viewers to see it that it actually gives a very deep insight into much of what is being discussed many of the questions that are being reached in the news about how does this happen is this real um and obviously while the show is fictional you can imagine a lot of these situations are you know very well researched and and taken from from real life so if you really want to know uh uh if you really want to know like you know how this uh how this uh uh uh sort of situation has come to where it is I think certainly the show covers many many bits and parts of it in that case I really want to know and I think it's on my agenda for this weekend thank you so much I guarantee the show will give you a hi uh but uh but no do do do do watch it and enjoy it fantastic thank you thank you so much for uh being with us joining us uh here uh and all the best and hope to see every Taiman package growing absolutely thank you very much look forward to chatting soon thank you