 A very good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and a very warm welcome to all of you to this event. We'll start in another 60 seconds. Thank you. Once again a very good afternoon and a warm welcome to all of you to this beautiful event. India's OTT market remains one of the fastest growing markets in the world and 2020 was the year of OTT. Streaming media has been a boon to all during this pandemic. The fresh content coming our way has helped us survive the lockdown and the consumers seeking out digital entertainment in the stay at home system. This new normal is definitely going to continue and stay in demand. It gives us immense joy to bring back to you the second edition of the E4M play streaming media conference as we acknowledge the content that came in the year 2020 and reward exceptional performances from video content to podcast to brand integration. E4M play aims at honoring content and recognizing talent. We promise you a day full of insightful sessions with experts from the ecosystem. Before we move forward, I definitely want to check with you. I really hope that you and your family and your loved ones are in safety of your homes and are doing well. Now stay tuned with us and keep tweeting using the hashtag E4M play. It's E numerical 4M play. Before we begin this conference, we would like to thank our sponsors as we all know no event is possible without the support of its partners and sponsors, not even a virtual one. So thanking our sponsors here. The conference is co-powered by Woot in association with Mylin Foundry, everything AI, anything creative. So before we move forward, can we have the AVs please? Can we play a partner AV? Once again, thank you to all our partners. Before we formally begin this event, we'd like to showcase the E4M audio version. Can we have the AV please? 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No wonder ExchangeForMedia group publications and events have high credibility and reach and are the destination of choice for agency, brand and media professionals across the industry. ExchangeForMedia Good afternoon, today is 12th May 2021. I hope you are keeping safe. I hope your families are keeping safe. I wish you well and I start with a prayer that all of you do well and your families do well, your loved ones do well. It's a very tough situation but we are hoping that at some stage things will get better. Today I am talking to you about ExchangeForMedia's OTT conference and awards play. OTTs in the last couple of years have grown and they are growing. When in the last 16 months we spend much more time in our homes consuming content OTTs have become very important and in some cases the primary source for content whether it's information, whether it's entertainment. Right now there is a lockdown in 26 Indian states and Indian territories but it's not on national.com but pretty much the curbs on shooting and creating new content in terms of outdoor shoots and stuff like that. So as we move into the next phase of growth for OTT there are these six concerns or areas or thoughts that I have. First is will OTTs become the primary source of content? Will they overtake television? Will they become a substitute to television? Not sure, at least not over the next 2-3 years but OTTs in their viewership and impact are growing. Second, the creation of Indian language content. Clearly the Netflix, Amazons and other players Z5 are mass players and they cater to English and Hindi but what about other languages? My hunch is in every language there will be at least 2-3 players that will come up and make an impact because they understand the nuances of that local culture. Third is this SWAT versus free versus pay. Clearly in the consumer's mind there are paid subscribers and they are advertising like the OTT platform. I think that differentiation will get accentuated. You cannot be everything to everyone. Fourth, in times like this when there is a lockdown how do you get new content? What kind of content do you get? What is the price you pay for content? Because the number of OTT players is grown. Fifth, very important is how do you create differentiation? OTTs will have to build brand differentiation. And last but not least, clearly the ecosystem around OTT of content creators will grow. Today you will hear stalwarts in the advertising, marketing, media, OTT domain talking to you about what they are doing to grow this domain and how they are in the play. Mr. R. Balki will be in conversation with me at 6pm so join that. Mr. R. Balki is also the chair of our OTT awards for the play. So I hope you continue to be in play in your life. I wish you safety, I wish you luck. I know the mood is somber but we do whatever we can to stay safe and pray for others. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Bhattra. And like Dr. Bhattra said, OTT has almost become the primary source of content during these lockdown times. And now for our opening address of E4M Play streaming media conference, I'd like to welcome Kanchan Santani, managing director and partner B.C. J. J. J. A very warm welcome to you ma'am. Thank you. And I hope the audio is okay. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. So good afternoon everyone. And first of all, thank you for having me here in this forum to speak with all of you. I think we are all as a country at a very difficult time in the throes of wave two and the pandemic situation over the past year has impacted both our daily lives, our personal lives, as well as particularly for the businesses like the one that we are discussing today. It's really changed the business in a pretty unprecedented manner as well. It's really forced all of us to challenge our conventional ways of thinking business operating models, what to expect in terms of growth, what to expect in terms of consumer demand. But today, I think it's hard to have a conversation without acknowledging the current situation that we are in. The fact that all of us are still here having this discussion, I think is, you know, is very commendable. At DCT over the past year or so, we've also been trying to in addition understand the impact on consumer behavior over this period of time and the implications of that on media and entertainment businesses, not just the OTT businesses but also the more traditional media businesses. Today, however, I want to take a slightly longer term view. We do believe that some of the trends on the consumer front have actually changed for good. And while understanding the impact of the pandemic is very important in the short to medium term, but there are also longer term fundamental drivers for streaming digital video growth in India that we should now acknowledge and think through how we evolve and how it gains momentum, not just in terms of consumers and viewership, but also monetization going forward. So I'm hoping that over the next few minutes I'm just able to provide some food for thought to trigger some discussions that you'll have over the course of the day. And I look forward to your questions and reflections as we go through this over the next 30 minutes or so as well. And maybe just to start with and to set the context, the consumption of media and entertainment has been quite robust, I think as already noted in the opening address in the last half an hour. And it's been very robust through the pandemic. Of course there were some short term losses when, when the whole country was a lockdown but there was a recovery and from a consumer France there was a recovery at a rate that's actually higher than the pre COVID baseline. I think what's also happened and which is unique to India is that multimodal growth is continuing and traditional media particularly TV is continuing to grow, although of course that a much slower pace than that more digital media or OTP is growing at now. So there has been growth in consumption and there has been growth in consumption pretty much across types of things with digital leading the pack. I've also seen for the first time there is some level of maturity which is coming through in the Indian consumer with some real signs that the Indian consumer is now willing to pay for content, particularly on digital media going forward. And there are some good robust early signs of that coming through as well. And I think if I take a longer term view, despite the situation that we are in these are all longer term very positive signs for the industry. In India, even pre pandemic, we have reached an average time of about 40 hours per week of media and entertainment activity for consumers on an average. This was still continuing to grow at low single digits which is actually pretty much in line with what you expect when you see the global trends as well. However, some parts of the media and entertainment pack have been very strong movement towards digital media, particularly what we are calling watch on the stage, which traditionally used to be the television channel, but nearly 20% of that even pre pandemic was actually nothing to have that much share on the digital front. And then as you move forward and look at the news and read and you know that that side of the house, nearly a third of it was actually already being time spent on digital media. And these are really India average numbers in reality when you cut down the consumers that you look at urban households you look at households with access to internet. These numbers actually look even more stock, which tells us that you know a lot of growth has yet to come and the opportunity and the fundamental consumer trend is really here to stay. Switching gears, maybe just to talk more specifically about OTT and the fundamental drivers that has been talking about I think there are some really big numbers here. By 2024, we expect that there could be as much as 900 million internet users in the country as much as 750 800 million of those users could actually be using a smartphone as much as 700 million of those could have some access to some video on demand platforms award or and nearly 200 of them could actually pay for for OTT or pay for this video on content that they are consuming the number of broadband households the amount of time spent on online video. All of that is is really, you know, at an inflection point, and this is a consumer trend, you know, we could be off here by a year we could be off by two years but we don't fundamentally believe that, you know, this picture will look different the picture will play out, you know, the timing depends a bit on on how we progress as a country in terms of the supply side of things as well. But what's the implication of this really for OTT, which is the topic for discussion today, and how do we as an industry ensure that this opportunity actually gets realized and monetized over a period of time is what I hope we are able to discuss over the course of today. You know, the market structure for the OTT segment today is already quite complex. And it is a bit challenging relative to the level of monetization that you see in the industry. There are no entry barriers, you know, anyone with a good proposition can come in and launch a platform to the fight for eyeballs the fight for revenue per eyeball is very much live and very much here. Now we've done extensive research in the past, which has shown that on an average, a consumer spends time on about two and a half apps on his or her smartphone. You know, which, given the context of having 30 plus OTT platforms in the country leads to a real fragmentation of eyeballs. And hence, as you look at creating longer term sustainable profitable business models, either, you know, the category creation towards a sport has to be very aggressive, or different types of business models will emerge and also succeed. For example, regional business models, or business models where the content is quite niche is able to attract a certain type of consumer segment, and is able to monetize that consumer segment, but one side of the house needs to work out either. You know, these are very niche business models with the need for a smaller set of consumers to actually make it sustainable. You know, or actually the growth continues on a much more aggressive level, but really there is a there is a question around just, you know, building out the business in a way that it is longer term sustainable and profitable. The current pandemic has also helped the industry to some extent by shifting advertising at a faster pace away from traditional media towards OTT. You know, last year during the lockdown and post the lockdown will be spoke to advertisers. The consensus view was that with marketing spends getting a bit more constrained. The need for really understanding the return on investment on marketing spend has become even more critical and digital platforms are better set up to deliver that. And there are a few critical levers that are required to be exercised by all digital players to actually improve the advertising monetization. I think the first one is improved targeting or what we call custom oriented to get the ads to reach the real potential consumers to reduce the wastage. And this needs to be based on really good consumer data with strong ability to mind that and be able to specifically price that. Even when marketing campaigns are running and our lives there is a need from advertisers keep optimizing the campaign parameters based on the results that they are getting and hence this real time tweaking becomes another important value proposition. And of course the measurability and the ability to actually communicate what is the real ROI. And hence all of this put together could create reduced customer acquisition costs could create higher ROI for advertisers, which particularly given the constraints that advertisers are operating under currently. You know, means means that there is a significant upside to be had. What we also noticed is over the course of the pandemic, there are a number of businesses who started advertising on digital platforms who had actually never advertised before. So I think the other opportunity really for for all OTP players is to get a much larger base of advertisers into the fold rather than competing for the same sets of advertisers based on the four points that we measure here which is very specific measurability and very specific targeting of the right consumer set, which is possible. So these are some of the opportunities really for OTPs going forward. The other trend, which I mentioned upfront and I think is becoming stronger and I know we have, you know, we have executives from many of the SWAT platforms on this on in this forum as well. But, you know, from a subscription standpoint we really believe that the market is starting to get right today more than ever before consumers are actually seeing the value of paying for content as long as they are getting some differentiated content on those platforms. Most platforms have also, you know, innovated and created customized plans reduce the threshold price at which consumers are getting in, which is encouraging more and more consumers to go towards the SWAT platform. Particularly last year, during the lockdown, the OTP platforms with their model were able to continue to provide some fresh content on the platforms which bought consumers on board, and it actually started to create longer term habits. So from a consumer standpoint, as long as the pricing is right and the value proposition works in terms of being able to get differentiated content, you know, this is a ripe time for growth of SWAT and I think we are starting to see that in a lot of the numbers around us and with all the leading platforms as well. Monetization, however, you know, continues to be somewhat of a challenge, even on the SWAT platforms which will start to get addressed as the volumes build up and as you're able to get things done. And as you're able to get the equation right. In fact, you know, most platforms have had to reduce the threshold price at which consumers get in to be able to get them to experience the power of original content. And then over a period of time, one has to find the right premium model which leverages both advertising and subscription to be able to create a longer term monetization. Let's upload further opportunities for OTTs from a monetization standpoint as you look forward. I think one is that local content consumption or vernacular content consumption which is also relevant to the culture of the state and the district that you are catering to is becoming more and more important. Particularly as we see that a larger share of new internet users, new video consumers who will come on board will be rural as well as coming from tier three, tier four India, you know, going much deeper into India. This comes with the implication and an expectation on vernacular and very culturally relevant content. And that's an opportunity not just to grow the viewer base but to actually tap into a whole new source of monetization for for the OTTs going forward. So far as well, hero content or what we call hero content, which is really well advertised, you know, well discovered content is what often gets consumers on the platform, and then they get hooked on to other content that's available on the platform. So this is a function of supply is a function of market maturity, but continuing to have more and more original content and hero content is important from the standpoint of continuing to grow and tap into new consumer steps by the OTTs moving forward. And the big lever for OTTs, especially those with a senior model where there is some dependence on advertising, is to get as close as possible to a segment of one marketing to maximize the ROI. And OTTs here as I mentioned before have a unique opportunity to bring on board advertisers who would have hesitated about getting on television, given the mass nature of that and the ability to target much more finely in an OTT context. The last opportunity I want to talk about very specifically is the globalization of Indian content. This has been a dream for India for a long time, and OTT platforms have a unique place and a unique opportunity to be able to do that. There is a lot of hours of original content getting created, which is very culturally relevant to India, and it's very customized to how you know the Indian consumer sees the market today. OTT platforms with their many of them with their global distribution actually have the ability to take this, not just to the large Indian diaspora approach, but also there is a demand for Indian content more broadly. And given the quantum of content being created, given the niches that are getting created, you know this is very much possible. And this has real legs for monetization, not just by taking the content abroad, but also it creates a very positive full through effect into several other sectors for India. For example, tourism in the post pandemic world, you know, and these are and these are all tried and experimented with models in the past, which have, you know, which have succeeded. And I think, you know, this continues to be an important lever for OTTs going forward. I don't want to spend too much time on the example, but you know, globalization of content in other parts of the world as well has actually seen, you know, a good amount of success, particularly in some of the lesser known geographies through some very large well known content and growth of based OTT content, hence we believe will actually help and export of Indian culture and in the process boost the number of, you know, related industries such as tourism, which is an important element of this. So, you know, all put together, we do believe that digital media is set to fire on all cylinders. So if you include gaming as a part of the industry, so if I look at gaming, A-Vod, S-Vod, you know, and both supported on the digital advertising as well as on the subscription base, I think numbers range anywhere from 5 billion to 7 billion in terms of the current size of the industry. I don't see any reason why this should grow slower than 15-20% for several years going forward, which means that, you know, six, seven years out, you could be looking at an industry which is between 15 to 20 billion dollars. However, this industry I strongly believe is also an industry where supply begets demand. I think the consumer side of this is right. The concern of the players to make the right investment be agile and show the right flexibility to be able to capture these consumers and to show the right flexibility on the advertising side to be able to capture one very important source of monetization. And hence my belief that this is about, you know, supply begets demand. If you are able to create the supply with the right propositions with the right pricing, the demand will follow because really the consumer side of the house is very robust now. But there is a need to, you know, address a few underlying challenges if you were to look at the full potential from a monetization standpoint. We talked about the targeting and measurement of advertising ROI, OTT having a very strong value proposition here, but there is a need to have a common currency which is recognized by the industry. I think this has been a discussion for several years now, but there is a need for having a third party validated source of data to get the advertisers to really put dollars behind the digital advertising proposition and find a way to attribute leads which are getting generated by digital platforms to the platform where they come from. And particularly for OTT which operates very much at the top of the funnel, this attribution often becomes an issue and it's something that we need to solve for as an industry. Lastly, I think there is a need for working with some of the more traditional companies on their advertising and marketing plans and getting them to understand the power of digital marketing and what it can deliver both in terms of ROI but also in terms of very specific targeting and very specific value propositions. I think there are places where the advertisers themselves actually need help in being taken along on this journey. They are able to see the value but they are not necessarily today set up the right way to be able to leverage the full power of digital marketing. And so as I look forward, I think the potential is immense. Unlocking this potential or decoding the potential whatever language we like to use, I think continues to require not just investment in content but investment in the most relevant culturally relevant content, creating the value positions for advertisers that can be cleanly articulated and demonstrated. Investment and skilling particularly with digital marketing organizations with the more traditional advertisers as well as being able to bring new advertisers into the fold by enabling them to use digital marketing and advertising in the best way possible for them and then continued investments on analytics and technology moving forward, which allows the whole value chain to work together. This is what I wanted to share just to kick off this discussion and just to kick off the discussion and provide some food for thought as we think about the decoding of the OTT industry over the rest of the day. I think we have a few minutes. I'm very happy to take any questions or reflections from anyone as required. Absolutely. Firstly, I want to thank you for such a broad overview of the OTT that you've given to us such great food for thought. I do have a couple of questions that we got in advance from our viewers. One of them pertaining to OTT in smaller towns. So how is the growing popularity of OTT in small towns impacting broadcasters and how local can the big OTT go if you can throw some light on it. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of discussion on this over the course of the day as well. But we are seeing that as the penetration of digital media is increasing, a lot of the next wave of growth is coming from tier 3, tier 4 towns and I believe even rural over a period of time. So I think that's a very important market segment going forward for all OTTs to address. So I think to that extent, you know, this is a very important part of the market. I think see in the way to address this market distribution from an OTT standpoint is actually not that difficult. I think what is required is the right level of marketing to ensure that consumers in these markets are actually aware of the value propositions aware of the platforms where they can get the content that they enjoy. And more importantly, providing content as I said, which is regional in nature, which is very culturally oriented to the areas that we are trying to address. If you are able to do that, I don't see the challenge with distribution as far as OTT is concerned. I think so far, I don't think there has been a very significant impact on television watching audiences in these markets. But maybe that's a matter of time and what we are seeing in India, however, is that there seems to be some sort of settling down of some value propositions that continue to remain on television like the family watching occasion of a movie in the evening where the whole family sits together in front of the television screen. But a lot of the personal content consumption is actually what is moving to OTT and all the second screens and third screens in the households are on OTT. And I mean, we're not seeing any reason why that trend will be very different even as we go deeper into the country. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Kanchan, for your time and for sharing your insights here with us from all of us at eForum. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me. All right, ladies and gentlemen, with that we are moving forward towards our fireside chat where we will talk about 2020 year that was in this chat we have with us Mr. Gaurav Gandhi, director and country general manager, Amazon Prime Video India, and chairing this session is Mr. Naval Ahuja co-founder and director exchange for media group. A very warm welcome to you gentlemen. Mr. Ahuja, I'd leave the screen to take forward. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kyati Gaurav. Welcome to the session and thank you for joining us today. I hope you and everybody at home is doing well. Let me start by talking about what's happening around us before we get into the finer points of the OTT business with Gaurav here. Over the last one week, I've been asked a few times, why are we doing this event? Is it necessary to curate something at a time like this? Why not postpone it? And we had a discussion. I had a discussion with all my colleagues. We also spoke with some of our partners. These are not easy choices to make. But we finally decided that curtailing whatever little economic activity that's happening around us, especially in the media advertising industry, is going to be counterproductive. Times are difficult. A lot of our own colleagues, their direct families, friends have been suffering. Me, my father is unwell in Delhi. I've had lots of friends who have lost family members. At times like these when there is so much gloom and gloom around, not organizing events is in some ways not going to change anything, especially if we are not coming in the way of any essential services working or we are not kind of taking away bandwidth from what the government or our COVID warriors are trying to do. And in line with that thinking, what we've also done is today's evening ceremony, which is the exchange from media, OTT play awards, has been toned down significantly and we'll just do a metal announcement and there'll be no celebrations. So as I said, not an easy choice to make, but we decided with going ahead with whatever economic activity we indulge in and hopefully things will start getting better as the country sees the peak of COVID cases behind us. With that out of the way, Gaurav, thank you for joining us. It is a very momentous year for the OTT industry, but before I get into business, tell us how you're coping up. How are your colleagues at Amazon coping up with the pandemic and as a leader, how do you keep strength and give strength to your colleagues every day? Thank you for having me now. Well, it's a pleasure to be here talking to everyone. It is a difficult time for everyone and you know, you talked about it, and it's no different for us. You know, everybody here is impacted, you know, you can't find anybody around who's not impacted one way or the other. So at times like this, people and their safety and the family safety comes first for anything else. And our big focus is that and the focus of the company also is on making sure we're pretty safe and healthy and what we can do for ourselves and people around us. So that remains like the number one area of focus for everybody. And of course, given that we continue to do our job of trying to get an attainment to people in the safety and confines of their home as much as possible. And I think we've been, you know, given the difficult times industry has been overall, everybody's come together to see what best we can do with that and I'm glad that we played our part in that. Fantastic. Let me dive into our, you know, session today, which is about the rise of OTT and what the future holds for us. Before I ask you a few questions, let me, you know, put some facts on the table to create a sort of background and perspective to our colleagues from the industry who are watching. Bach's report, recent report said India now has some 210 million households with television sets, which roughly means that five people per household, roughly a billion people are watching or have access to television content. Now that feat, as we all know, has been achieved in almost 30 years of private satellite television in India. Television industry pay TV revenues are expected to touch almost $12 billion by 2025, which is not far just four years away. On the other hand, OTT is estimated to have almost some reports say OTT is estimated to have almost 500 million subscribers by 2023, which is just around the corner, just 18 months away, and also expected to have almost $5 billion revenue. The current OTT market size of around $1.5 billion includes obviously both advertising and subscription revenues, with a larger share almost two thirds coming from advertising and rest coming from subscription. The point here is what TV managed in almost 30 years, OTT will end up covering half of that journey in just a, you know, one third under one third of time period. If we assume that, you know, the real growth of OTT in India started a decade back roughly 10 years. Now that is obviously having a profound impact on consumers, consumer habit, content production, the entire ecosystem of OTT businesses in India. Let me start by asking you, Gaurav, you've seen both sides of the journey. You've been a television executive for many years before you launched Voot for Viacom and then jumped into Amazon. And you've also seen the insights of how television companies have worked. In your assessment, how's been the journey from being a TV executive to now an OTT company leader from a view of one, the content piece that you always looked at and second, the business model of both of these companies, how they work. Yeah. Thanks. It's a big question and has many strands to it. So I'll try and answer that. I think it's fair to say that the OTT segment or streaming segment in India has grown exponentially over the last, you know, five or six years or seven years. And before I get to TV and, you know, there are some tailwinds that the category has seen, which has led to this growth. And I think some of them are going to continue. So whether it was the fact that, and Kanchana was talking about it in the previous segment that I joined, she talked about the fact that OTT gets to smaller town cities very easily on distribution. I think that's a very critical difference between the two. The fact that there was a physical distribution needed compared to you were running on a backbone of telecom and wireless infra. So that one of the biggest tailwinds obviously was with the growth of broadband and affordable data as well as connectivity. And the other question you talked about was 210 million homes and interesting part of that is about 95% of that homes remain single TV. So here you have a ubiquitous, you know, sort of device which becomes TV for everybody in the house. And therefore, you suddenly have hundreds of millions on back of that data available to access content. And then the third part of that is naturally about content availability. And another interesting part of that was the early parts of the growth of the journey came from, you know, a lot of free content available easily, whether it was YouTube or broadcast or putting the content away. And people get on the habit of it. And then came the premium content where customers could actually directly pay and that segment grew with affordability growing. So in many ways, the tailwind of this sector has been unique and that continues to grow. But I want to just go back to your question on broadcast a little bit before we come back to streaming and how that will sort of see over the next few years. I think the broadcast business in 30 years done a lot. So first of all, let's like, we think say 30 years, but you know, that industry at 210 million has achieved a lot. That said, it has its commercial model, the way it is, it is highly dependent on advertising. Yeah, it has challenges on the subscription revenue side it has had over the years. And because it's dependent so much on advertising, it sort of operates on the currency of ratings, which itself means that you have to sort of serve the center of plate lowest common denominator first, and then build segments at the top. And the largest sort of revenue will go to the one which serves the maximum size of the plate, right, so to say. Now that makes it that everybody is chasing just that singular kind of eyeball to be able to make a difference and make a revenue model. So in many ways, all broadcasters have the same revenue model. It's largely linked to advertising, somewhat linked to subscription, if at all, but nobody subscriptions skewed only or could not. By the way, many TV companies tried the slicing model, but it never worked because of high distribution cost. Exactly. And therefore, if you were dependent on that, you had to then therefore, you know, change your models back to saying, how can I work within this confine and therefore it led to the kind of content and the kind of shows and the episodic like the kind of episodic formats and so on. And nothing wrong with it. It's just that it is a function of the commercial model. Now, I'll give you an analogy to it when you come to streaming. So there was segmentation, so to say, was not possible at all. And we all know that even in advertising, the more sharper you can get to segment to a customer set and so on, the more you can, you know, get to besides the size and scale of audience, you can get to higher CTMs or higher rates. Now, when it came to streaming, you certainly could segment. You could say this is for X and this is for Y. Much like you would say in the multiplexes, I'm only going to make a movie for 100 seats and one screen compared to a 1000-seat screen and single screen, where I had to therefore make every movie combination of many genres while segmented cinema can come up because multiplexes were there now. In many ways, streaming can do that. And that's the difference in the model. The earlier versions of streaming said, hey, but there's no scale here. It's only for, you know, select metro audiences. But, you know, interestingly, you know, your question, one question from the, from somebody, the audience was about, does it reach in areas of the country? I can tell you, Prime Video is watched in over 4300 towns and cities in the country. You know, and we are a service behind a paywall. So I think there is scale in streaming. There is the business model of segmentation in streaming. And one should sort of not confuse streaming always with streaming-only content. The fact is the pipes of broadband and the services on streaming can provide streaming originals. They provide TV content available, you know, to the customers, the same soaps and TV shows. They provide news. They also provide sports and they also provide movies. Today, they provide, you know, almost as much if not larger reach for many films, you know, that theatrical business can provide. So I think that's the big difference. And I see over a longer term, it's more and, and then not all. But streaming has a very big headroom to grow. And in a few years, you'll be as many customers actually streaming as watching TV. Absolutely. I'll come back to the, you know, TV versus streaming debate a little later in our discussion. Let me jump on to, you know, what's been happening around us over the last 12 months, especially with regards to the movie business. Unfortunately, Cinema Halls have had to shut down and the sort of impact of that has been content consumption, movie content consumption on OTT platforms has skyrocketed. And that's completely also changed the dynamics of the movie, you know, business trades, so to say. I recall it was early 2000 and Z launched this Friday premiere show then they started acquiring television movie content, satellite movie content in bucketfuls. And suddenly a title pricing for movies went up skyrocketed and then Sony TV got into the game. They acquired the entire Yash Raj library gradually star got in. They tied up with many large producers and today OTT platforms are doing exactly what you know, television did 15, 20 years back. One of the reports I was reading said that subscription video revenues on OTT last year, last year surpassed Cinema Hall ticket revenues naturally because a lot of Cinema Halls were shut. Now, the corollary of this Gaurav is that OTT platforms have obviously spent a lot of money on acquiring movie content. It has also created a kind of inequality in the sense that only big-ticket titles get sold well and the other titles kind of, you know, find it difficult to get buyers. A lot of OTT platforms have also curated their SWAT strategy around big-ticket releases. For example, Z is going to release Radhe on Z5 before it hits cinemas. Tell us as laypeople in this industry, how do the economics of movie content acquisition work? How do you ever sit down and do a PNL where you have to write 300 crores plus on the cost side and, you know, revenues are, you know, sort of kind of fuzzy, I would say, for lack of a better term. Before we get to a comment on the economics, I think it's important to understand the role streaming is playing. And I would say it's, you know, simply put you said it's similar to what broadcasts are doing, you know, a few years back, but I would say it's kind of different in my view. I'll tell you why. Today, you know, in a country which makes between 1500 and 2000 films and has, you know, all of us are film fans and, you know, we only have 9000 screens. Per capita, per million screen rate is amongst the lowest in growing markets. So it's 8 per million or something like that compared to 100 plus for US and, you know, 5x on China. I think the problem with that is that the reach that our biggest films are getting today in theatrical, in the percentage audience, would be like the biggest film to get 2% people to watch in theaters. That's right. Most films will actually have, you know, in this earliest window between 0.1 to 0.5% of audience watching it. The thing with streaming is able to do is provide augment that reach significantly in the very early window and therefore generate value for both customers who may not choose to go to theater for every movie. We may necessarily go for events or event films and some films. Also generate value for the producers who are able to now actually make additional revenue in the early window. And I think the third important piece is it is able to seed demand for which was earlier non-existent. Let me give you an example. And I'll come to the reach points more in more detail. When we did direct-to-service film last year when we actually, you know, when there was a lockdown and we worked with creators to get these movies on, we did movies in five languages. Now, the interesting thing we observed now was that our Tamil Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada cinema movies actually got about 50% of its audience outside their home state. What that really meant was that there was now a customer base ready to watch these films in their local language with subtitles or whatever else, options available on localization and you get that reach. If you look at a difference now with that versus what was happening earlier, in a theatrical world, I will get limited distribution of these films outside the home state because obviously demand is a physical theater dedicated to that test. Even in TV world, the reality was those packs would be the local language packs, original language packs would be sold to customers who want that language. So you will buy the Tamil language on a DTH or on cable and you'll only get the movies there. Here suddenly, customers who are able to actually, who otherwise watch Hindi or Bengali or Marathi are able to watch Malayalam language films. A great example is say, I mean, last year I had a lot of these, so I went through with a great example. Drishyam recently is a great example, you know. So I think that's a very big thing for creators, for customers, which is unique. Similarly, outside the country, again a question which was coming, I think I again got the back, a half of conscious slides. We talked about exporting content. These movies internationally would get released only in about 15, 20 countries at best. And you know, I've been in this industry for 20 years and we've seen that number has grown from 10 to 20. It's not grown from 10 to 50, right? And the reality is streaming is able to get those films to available in 200 countries but actually watched in 170, 180 countries in the initial period itself. So I think there is a, there's a large role that will reach a distribution besides the economics that one is able to play and change in the game. I'll give you a reverse example. You know, we're getting parasite last year. You know, for example, in India, a Korean language film was watched, you know, dubbed in Hindi by so many customers locally here. So I think a bunch of these things show you the part. Now come to economics of it. Your question, I think that economics, it's a very simple thing. There has to be somebody for whom it makes sense to sell the film at a price and somebody who makes sense to buy the film at the price. And everybody has a different model. Some people have a model which is, okay, let me put this on, you know, first on paid and free. Somebody has a model that, you know, I have a, you know, a telecom business which will link to that. Somebody has different models. I think you can debate about the model. I think what's going to happen going forward is we've been seeing for the last four years, we're working with partners to get these films between four to eight weeks of theatrical. Yes. In any case, it made sense suddenly because theaters were shut to, you know, make it direct to service. Now, what that does is suddenly the reach that people have got with this movie being watched in 4,000 cities and towns in the country, suddenly creators are able to say that, hey, I can actually get my audience far wider than even a theatrical release could get in the beginning. And I'm not here to say that streaming will replace theatrical business. I'm just saying that in many ways, what it will do is it is augmenting that reach. And some films will go dead to streaming. Some films will come early window. Some films will go later window and so on. So it just creates an alternate vehicle for creators and for customers. Yeah, I think very interesting. In fact, you mentioned Drisham. I think Drisham is a fit case where a movie available OTT can go in the same language on TV, right? Of course, the Hindi one will be out. It'll take maybe two or three years. But having seen the movie, I think it's a brilliant case for a Hindi TV channel to pick it up and just run it as it is on a Hindi TV channel. It will still have some takers. I don't know how the economy's pricing will work, but fantastic content. I think we've seen this before. We've seen this in so many films that are getting national reach and able to get customers across the country to watch it and enjoy it. And that's really the interesting part of how this dynamic is changing. Yes, let me come to the content piece. The non-movie, non-cricut content piece got out. And a lot of various kinds of models have been tried globally and in India from the days of platforms like Hulu to Amazon and Netflix, Disney Plus to the Indian OTTs, the likes of Woot and MX players of the world. Naturally, content is the significant part, apart from technology that OTT players need to invest in. I last read some $700 million dollars annually is being spent by OTT players, India companies in content, both acquisition as well as fresh content. And we've seen many over the last five, six years if we see the growth of OTT. Lots of various models have been tried when it comes to investment in fresh content in India. And large number of OTT players are also owned by TV companies who have a certain kind of appetite and scale. If you want to do crystal ball gazing and tell us how that content piece will play out, and I asked that question with two legs. One is I think a large number of TV companies and the other is a large number of TV companies.