«Indie OTTs: how to make business happen?» was one of the top panels during the weekend at VS Next, the conference portion of Virtual Screenings Worldwide that is offering some of the best business concepts of the nowadays international marketplace. The round-table showed the new independent OTT landscape, with successful examples in India, USA, Latin America and Russia.
Girish Dwibhashyam, VP Strategy at DocuBay, described the IN10 Media Network service as a ‘niche global’ platform specially designed for documentary enthusiasts. ‘DocuBay is not trying to be another platform, we try to fill a gap where there are many consumers of this content. Our differential is content curation. We pride ourselves in the fact that we have partnered with esteemed companies around the worlds, and our content acquisitions and curatorial teams go through vast catalogs with hundreds of titles to pick the best of the best’, he said.
Adrián Garelik, CEO, offered details about Flixxo, the micro series G-VOD (Gamified Video on Demand) services funded in Argentina, launched globally during the pandemic, and that has 100,000 users: ‘We wanted to make a free platform and the first thing we thought about was combining BitTorrent with Blockchain to have a legal content distribution system that does not need any kind of intermediary. We offer animation, horror, comedy, drama and documentaries, and we have already produced seven originals, while we are also distributing them globally at VSWW. We aim to continue building alliances to strengthen our catalog, with companies such as Caracol TV (Colombia) or Dori Media for the web series Amanda O’.
Jordan Warkol, Marketing Director at Toon Goggles, launched in 2011, is a free portal where children can enjoy an ever-growing library of entertaining programming that is pre-screened and determined to be safe and age-appropriate for children under the age of 13. ‘Our strategy is to be the bridge between the audience and the children’s content providers. Recently we added a suite of dedicated kids and family linear channels to the service available as the first kids vMVPD offering. This creates a one-stop application for families to stream on-demand and linear content globally. Hundreds of content producers from around the globe are currently supplying animated features, programs, series, clips and trailers to Toon Goggles’ rich library that children can enjoy and parents can feel good about’.
David Chu, CEO at Digital Media Rights is a digital media company that operates six OTT services with different business verticals: ‘We are transforming the industry while specializing in three distinct areas: Digital Distribution, OTT Digital Networks and the DMR Advertising Marketplace. On the former one, we’ve become one of the world’s largest content aggregators and distributors with a catalog containing more than 7,500 premium titles from leading TV networks, studios, producers and sales agents. The company has cultivated distribution deals with Amazon Instant Video, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, Cable VOD, iTunes, Google Play, FandangoNow, Hoopla, Kanopy, Vudu, to name a few’, he said.
Maria Grechishnicova, CEO at Star Media, one of the main content providers and producers in Russia, spoke about the current moment of OTT in this market, where she highlighted that the genres have diversified, and more and more local platforms continue to emerge with their ‘own identity’. She remarked: ‘It can be said that Russia is an emerging market for content, and it is beginning to have demand for local content and this is encouraging national producers to supply this demand’.
The full session can be watched here: https://virtualscreenings.com/vs-next-panel-10/
