Click here to read the full article.
India’s queen of television Ekta Kapoor is betting that Indian viewers walking away from appointment television will still watch long-running fiction, just on YouTube’s terms.
In an interview with Variety, the Balaji
Telefilms Ltd. joint MD, and Gunjan Soni, YouTube’s managing director for India, break down the partnership between the two companies, under which Balaji will launch five original shows spanning 200 episodes exclusively on YouTube.
Kapoor will lead the creative vision for the shows and retain ownership of the intellectual property, while YouTube provides global distribution and monetization through advertising and brand deals. The slate includes “Haq Se” Season 2, “Phir Pyar Ki Yeh Kahani Suno” and “Kehne Ko Humsafar Hai” Season 4, alongside other projects still in development. The shows are produced in 4K, with the slate rolling out over the coming festive season.
Kapoor says the shift reflects a broader change in how Indian viewers consume fiction. “YouTube has done so well in India, the way they have grown and the way people have sought it, it’s shown that the audience tastes have changed dramatically,” Kapoor says. “There is a certain amount of audience that doesn’t want … appointment viewing as much as they want comfort viewing.”
Soni backs that up with her own numbers. “YouTube is now the number one streaming platform, as rated by Comscore, for connected TVs,” Soni says. “We are reaching about 75 million Indian adults on this large big screen in the living room.” She describes the audience YouTube is chasing as significantly younger and traditionally known for shorter attention spans, but says that reputation is misleading. “Already … 94% viewers spend more than 72 minutes a day on connected screens,” Soni says. “And we see the same phenomenon that it’s a myth that people are only watching shorter and shorter content. It’s really about the power of the content itself.”
Asked whether the deal could become a template for other producers to build franchises without surrendering ownership to a broadcaster or streamer, Soni says the model already exists among YouTube’s creator base. “We often call our creators the new-age studios, and they create fantastic episodic IPs,” Soni says. She points to podcasting and other genres as examples, adding: “I see no reason why … that shouldn’t happen for the high-quality fiction storytelling that … really what Ekta is known for.”
Kapoor describes an underserved segment of Indian viewers who are neither watching broadcast television nor fully served by niche content on paid apps. “There is a whole lacunae of content that is missing to that that is not being catered to for the young Indian: relatable, not completely niche, and not completely mass,” Kapoor says, adding that Balaji is building toward what she calls a “TV+” audience with the 200 episodes.
On whether the shows will be chopped into microdrama-style shorts, Kapoor says that isn’t the plan. Shorts tied to the shows will function as promotional hooks rather than standalone monetized content. “It’s not really so much of the change of habit as much as no content available for you to actually spend more than a minute on,” Kapoor says.
Kapoor says audience data, more than direct feedback, will shape where the shows go. “We’re just going to be B2C, direct to customer. In that, what happens is it’s a direct conversation, it is no longer confined to only the demographic of a broadcast channel, it is far and wide,” Kapoor says. She adds that data will guide the storytelling more than comments will: “I feel more than just comments, viewer habit is what data tells you …, and from thereon, it’s what you understand of it to build your storyline.”
On competing with Netflix, Prime Video and JioHotstar for viewing time and talent, Soni positions YouTube as a collaborator rather than a rival streamer. “I think we always see our role as a true collaborative partner in the ecosystem, and we therefore view everyone around us as a space where we’re actually naturally growing the pie,” Soni says.
Kapoor, asked where India’s next breakout entertainment franchises will emerge, declines to bet on a single format. “There is no one medium that confines a creator,” Kapoor says. “You might have a really breakout creator come out of television, you might have a breakout creator come out of YouTube or any of these user-led platforms, or then from a paid subscription app.”
On monetization beyond advertising, Soni points to a mix of revenue streams already forming around episodic YouTube content. “We’ve also seen great success for episodic IPs on memberships as a medium,” Soni says. “We’re seeing fan funding evolve as well.”
The partnership marks Balaji’s move to launch original IP natively on YouTube, with new episodes expected during the festive season on the company’s YouTube channel.
