Soap operas have lost their appeal in India: ShortsTV CEO Carter Pilcher

India's creative community is well positioned to work internationally, Pilcher tells Shubhomoy Sikdar

As a TV channel that exclusively airs short films, do you see yourself as a disruptor in India?

We are a disruptor in all the markets that we are in and we want to be a disruptor particularly in India where there is still a lot of chaos. In this chaos, it is easy to forget the economics of it for a new entrant but the challenge is figuring out a model that gives us money. In our case though, we have not lost that focus — that of monetising the business. Television in that sense is a good platform.

So where are you in that journey towards monetisation?

We are in more than 100,000 homes on Tata Sky and have added other DTH players in the fold recently. We have a subscription-based model. On Tata Sky, we are a luxury product and are charging Rs 75 a month. From that point of view, the 100,000 number is great. Also, soon after our entry in November 2018, the tariffs were revised and despite the TV bills going up, people opted to add Shorts TV. This shows a huge demand. We have broken even in terms of recovering the cost incurred on content sourcing. 

But over-the-top is catching on in India? What are your plans in that area?

In the US, we are testing our app. But the difference between our app and other video streaming apps, say Netflix and Amazon Prime, is the content on offer. They have long format while we have shorter formats (the maximum duration of a short film is 40 minutes; the run-time can be as short as two minutes). This makes it more like a music streaming app. For now, we are giving it to 500 of our direct TV homes and we are giving it to them for free on iOS for the past six months. We plan to roll it out by the second quarter of next year and that will eventually come to India too.

That raises two questions. One, how will you deliver value for money compared to other platforms who even have India specific, cheaper plans and two, how much will be the threat of cannibalisation, that is, the odds of your DTH growth getting stunted with each OTT download?

We have witnessed that the audience in India is very excited about the films that we show and there will be takers for that content. So our focus will be to get the best films and show them on all our platforms. We will also invest more in marketing as we launch the app; now we are working mainly with our affiliates such as Airtel, Tata Sky and their marketing networks. 

Since we have demand, we don’t see either competition or cannibalisation being a deterrent for us. I am even more excited by the response of the creator community and the prospects it offers. We now have filmmakers such as Anurag Kashyap who have the experience of making content for OTT platforms and the big screen and the kind of films they make are translatable. I can take these films and experiences to other markets that we are in — be it the United States or Latin America.  

What is the content mix for your short films here and what can we expect as you grow?

As of now, it is 70:30, that is, 70 per cent international content picked from all over the globe. The 30 per cent indigenous content that we currently offer is the best short films we have sourced in different languages, from Hindi to Kannada to Tamil. Some were available on other platforms but we also kept a lot of exclusive content in the mix. 

As we move ahead, we aim to double the Indian content on offer. By the end of 2020, we aim to at least serve 50 per cent Indian content. We are talking to production companies to make short format series. We are working with one of our partners from Latin America on tele novellas. That format is dying as the audience is growing older. So we will like to make youth-focused tele novellas. In India, soap operas do not appeal to the young anymore but we think it’s a fascinating format and we are in talks with partners who can get that kind of content. That is true for some other formats as well.