Six years ago on this day, fictional Marathi web series, MovingOut was published on the YouTube channel “ReverbKatta“.
Since then the series has garnered more than 15 lakh unique viewers on ReverbKatta alone and has been distributed to all the major OTT platforms that carry Marathi content.
On its sixth anniversary, I would like to share my thoughts behind creating MovingOut and ReverbKatta.
“There isn’t anything worth watching” is the most common excuse for dwindling eyeballs to Marathi content. We wanted to create something that would appeal to the global Marathi speaking audience.
MovingOut is story of Reva, a modern, urban girl who moves out of her comfort zone to explore the world around her.
More than 36% of the viewership is from the age group 18 to 25 from Urban Maharashtra. So I guess it is safe to say that if you create relatable content, you can get the next generation to watch Marathi content.
We also felt that it was a matter of time before people would prefer to watch Video On Demand rather than appointment based linear mediums like TV.
In order to attract this audience to the web-based content, in addition to creating a storyline that they could relate to, it was also important to leverage face value that they could easily identify. Abhidnya Bhave and Nikhil Rajeshirke were two very popular faces on Marathi television and were kind enough to explore the web world with us.
This strategy worked very well and we were able to attract a lot of audience in the age group of 40 to 65 (16%)
Taking into account, the ever decreasing attention spans, each episode of MovingOut was designed to be approx 10 minutes in duration. This strategy also worked to our advantage in that , the average retention on each episode was more than six minutes.
Care was also taken to ensure that the shot taking was suited for the mobile screens. More than 87% of the viewership is on mobile devices. On a side note, I am happy that almost 2% of the viewership is on smart television.
Partnering with RedFM worked extremely well. A contest was announced at end of every episode and the results were announced on radio. There was tremendous response to these competitions as well.
There are more than eighty million Marathi speaking people globally, yet there are very few OTT platforms that are dedicated to MARATHI.
When you publish something on the web you are providing a window for the entire world to peep in. When they did, we wanted to ensure that they got to see the developed and advanced India as it truly is and how, despite its advancement and modernity retains its rich cultural heritage.
As the audience moves from linear television to video on demand, it is only a matter of time before the marketing spend will make its shift. Advertising on the new age medium will present its own challenges. Time will tell if AVOD or SVOD or TVOD or Freemium will dominate. More than one dozen brands are subtly integrated into MovingOut.
This, in a nutshell is our vision behind ReverbKatta.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who chose to tread the path with us.
