Building a wholesome family entertainment product: Viacom18

Viacom18 has been buzzing fervently with activity. It bagged an investment of ₹13,500 crore from a consortium of investors led by Bodhi Tree Systems, a platform of James Murdoch's Lupa Systems and Uday Shankar, to jointly pioneer the Indian media landscape's transformation to a "streaming-first" approach. This strategic partnership also saw the transfer of the JioCinema OTT app to Viacom18. Jyoti Deshpande, the new force majeure at Viacom18, is at the helm of this epochal transition.

“What we are trying to do is build a new product—leave behind all the legacy and build a product that provides wholesome family entertainment, which includes TV plus everything that our broadcast networks offer,” Deshpande explains in a conversation with Fortune India.

The Reliance-owned entertainment platform is silently putting into motion the production of originals in Hindi as well as eight other languages; movies in Hindi as well as eight other languages as well as most of the biggest, the most compelling sporting events. “It’s our aspiration to create a superapp kind of an experience; a one-stop shop destination, where you can discover all of the content that the entire family needs. That is the goal of what we’re trying to build. So, you will see those investments in the years to come,” Deshpande adds.

Viacom18 is also looking at overhauling the look and feel of its app, along with delivering bespoke content for Indian audiences. “First and foremost, is the consumer building world-class technology and consumer experience; building for scale and concurrency. When a consumer launches an app, he or she should have a wonderful experience and an intuitive experience in engaging with that content,” Deshpande adds, calling it a work in progress. “In the next several quarters, we will up our game in terms of building that world-class product out, and then, once we have that world-class product, we will unleash the content and marketing around it, which we hope will translate into customer acquisition.”

Viacom18 has also charted a long-term strategy for the forthcoming decade and is deploying capital to virtually create a digital market. “The next three years is all about investing for the next 10 years, so I would say the next three years would be about building this huge digital proposition. Investing in people; technology; products; and content, and investing in our customers. In the next three years, where we will invest to build this market, we are going to invest in creating this digital market and then take a large market share of that market that we create,” Deshpande sums up.