India has 121 languages and 19,500 dialects and Hindi is just one of them. While Hindi and English currently dominate content among streaming platforms in India, regional platforms and OTT apps are springing up, targeting audiences looking for content in their local languages.

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Allu Arvind, Promoter of Aha, an Indian OTT platform that offers content in Telugu and Tamil, says, “Be it entertainment, be it food, or anything — local is going to have its own importance. People never forget the local taste of language, food, and other ethnic values.”

Vishnu Mohta, Co-Founder of Hoichoi says, “Customers demand hyper localisation, customers demand that content is told in their language, and depicts their stories, their realities.”

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A report by FICCI and EY estimates that by 2024, 54 percent of content produced for OTTs will be in languages other than Hindi and English.

Three-year old Aha has 2.5 million paid subscribers and 12 million monthly active users. STAGE, founded in 2019, has 2,75,000 paid subscribers for its content in Haryanvi and Rajasthani dialect. Bengali-content streamer Hoichoi had 13 million subscribers as of 2020 and Planet Marathi said it has over 24 million video plays on its app.

This growing popularity has been driven by greater smartphone and internet penetration, cheap data, and increasing adoption of online payment systems like UPI.

Vinay Singhal Co-Founder and CEO of STAGE says, “People said Bharat doesn't pay for content, but that was proven wrong. People are ready to pay if you provide value and good content.”

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Content in regional languages is also going beyond just dubbing from one language to another.

Ajit Thakur CEO of Aha says, “Original content is where our connect with local stories is, original content has better return on investment (ROI), cheaper to produce than acquiring the films. And original content is the IP that we own.”

This also leads to more jobs and talent discovery, not to mention better business metrics.

Singhal says, “We create an entire web series — 6 episodes under Rs 20 lakh. Our cost structures are of the local places of Haryana and not Mumbai.”

The Indian diaspora is a major subscriber base for regional OTTs and if the success of RRR and Pushpa are any indication, there is massive potential for regional content among international audiences as well. But for regional platforms, capturing subscribers back home is still the first preference... and with a finger on the pulse, regional OTTs could give players like Netflix and Amazon Prime a run for their money.

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