Wooing NRIs with online videos

NautankiTV, along with big players like Rajshri Media and StarTV's indya.com, is targeting the non-resident Indian (NRI) community with online videos and looking at advertisers who also plan to attract this customer base.

A start-up by three friends with Angel investment of Rs 1.5 crore, the portal has close to 40 per cent of its users from the US and UK. An eight-month-old start-up providing online video content, the portal claims to generate 100,000 hits per day and depends primarily on ads for revenues.

With a team of 30 people generating 70 per cent of the content, it has already introduced six channels "� humour, drama, short-films, event and film based shows and spiritual and astrology.

It has created a network of close to 300 websites like saffrontrail.com wherein the user can go and watch the video.

"In the next 6 months, we will accept ads from the overseas market too," says Sunil Nair, co-founder of NautankiTV. The company expects its revenues will touch Rs 12 crore by 2008.

The current global online video content market is pegged at $7.5 billion. The Indian video advertisement market is expected to reach Rs 750 crore in the next 2-3 years, according to independent industry sources.

Moreover, the Indian Internet industry is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 43 per cent over the next five years to touch Rs 950 crore by 2011, states a PwC and Federation of Indian of Chambers and Commerce Industry (FICCI) report.

These figures have allured big players like Rajshri Media and StarTV's indya.com too.

The other common theme is that none of these players, including Nautanki.com, is keen on introducing user generated content (UGC) which is the most popular format on portals like Youtube and Yahoo video.

"Look at Google, because of the copyright issues of videos, YouTube is involved in billion of dollars worth of law suites. Besides, UGC does not guarantee quality and consistency. We do have UGC too but in small doses," says Nair.

On their part, Rajshri and StarTV are currently showcasing films and popular TV series reformatted for this medium for a nominal fee (anywhere between Rs 40 to Rs 400) on download of films, they are also planning to introduce fresh content.

Of course, advertisement will be the largest revenue contributor. Apart from 6,000 hours of video content that Rajshri Films has and 200 plus full length movies for free (to watch), the production house will soon release a series specially for the Internet viewer.

"We are already producing 90 episode series for the Internet audience and should release it in a few weeks time," says Rajjat Barjatya, managing director, Rajshri Media.

Since the attention span of an Internet user is a few minutes the content generated is for a period of 3-5 minutes or maximum 8-18 minutes. Barjatya also plans to target the NRI crowd but in the long learn he wants to look at the Indian market too.

"Its just a matter of time, with the broadband infrastructure changing fast people will look at rich media experience," he adds.

Barjatya too believes online advertisements will pick up in due course and will have a bigger share. Rajshri films sports two formats "� free to stream and pay to download.

"In the free to streaming ads are inserted at certain intervals like it happens on television. For those who want to download pay a nominal fee," he adds. He is also planning to introduce a subscription model.

With the success it has seen in just eight months, the founders of NautankiTV plan to provide content for 4-5 regional channels in the next 6 months.

Nair is confident the site will garner 1 million hits per day in the next three months, increase their networking web to 100,000 in two years and increase their advertising revenues to at least 10 per cent of the total online video advertising market.