Chennai-based ChuChu TV hits top slot with 17.5 million subscribers

ChuChu TV's biggest strength is its dominance in the pre-school space on YouTube

1528136071-845

Chennai-based ChuChu TV Nursery Rhymes and Kids Songs, an online channel for pre-school kids became the biggest in this segment on YouTube with 17.5 million subscribers earlier this year.

Its eight channels offer four languages – Tamil, Spanish, French and Portuguese. Their total number of subscribers is over 25 million, up from 14.3 million last year, according to Vidooly, a video intelligence firm. It is now, after T-Series and Sony Liv, the third most subscribed YouTube channel in India and among the 100 most subscribed globally.

Vinoth Chandar, co-founder, chief executive officer and creative director, explains: “Most of the numbers are from YouTube because Roku, Amazon or other platforms don’t give statistics.”

Even if they did, the fact is that more than 80% of the traffic for ChuChu TV comes from YouTube. Every strategic investor who has checked it out worries about its ability to scale beyond YouTube, online and beyond pre-school children.

As a reference, they point to the Rs 37.8 billion revenue of Viacom18, which has a robust kids business on television with Nick, Sonic and others which develop characters such as Motu-Patlu. Till last year, these TV characters were bringing in more than a fifth of the traffic on its video app Voot, plus revenue from consumer products featuring them.

1528136321-0483

ChuChu TV’s biggest strength is its dominance in the pre-school space on YouTube. This puts it in a good spot in the Rs 119 billion digital advertisement market which Google, YouTube’s owner, dominates. Usually, it shares half or more of the revenue YouTube generates with content creators.

But, this also exposes ChuChu TV to the vagaries of the Google algorithm, which could change any day. Since BARC, the TV rating agency in India, doesn’t measure pre-school viewership separately television is not a viable alternative in an ad-driven market.

ChuChu TV’s founders spent the better part of last year addressing some of these issues. In December 2017, it launched a subscription-driven video app that has had 500,000 downloads globally, claims Chandar. It continues to add subscribers from Canada, Australia and the US. Read More

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Flipkart-ebay deal and the high stake battle with Amazon

Image
Flipkart has been and will continue to make acquisitions to increase scale India's top e-commerce firm   Flipkart   has raised $1.4 billion in its biggest fundraising to date as it takes on US tech giant   Amazon.com   Inc for a larger share of the country's burgeoning online retail market. Chinese social media and entertainment firm Tencent Holdings Ltd, the world's biggest software company Microsoft Corp and online marketplace eBay Inc participated in the funding round, Flipkart said in a statement on Monday, which will value the Indian company at $11.6 billion. That is lower than the $15 billion valuation achieved at its last fundraising in 2015, reflecting how competition has intensified in the e-commerce sector as companies vie for a slice of the world's fastest-growing internet services market. Amazon last year said it would invest over $5 billion in India, and has recently expanded into online video and grocery shopping, seeking to expand aggressively
Read more

Amazon now has customers in 100% serviceable pin-codes in India: Jeff Bezos

Image
If things fall in place, then a deal with a major offline retailer might happen by the end of this year, according to a source Amazon might be the most visited shopping site in India, but for Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of the technology giant, it is still Day 1 in what may be the second-most important market for the firm outside the US. Bezos, in a letter to customers, said that Amazon now has customers in 100 per cent serviceable pin-codes in the country and is shipping packages from more than 50 fulfillment locations in 13 states. From talking about how Alexa plays devotional songs in local Indian languages to Amazon India working closely with communities in rural areas, Bezos said that the online marketplace has now become part of the country's culture and has adapted all its services and offerings accordingly. Stressing that Amazon India has captured the top spot for the last two years, Bezos pointed out that Amazon is the most visited site in the cou
Read more

Hypertension drug recall by USFDA shot in the arm for some drug majors

Image
The recall was due to an impurity (N-Nitrosodimethylamine or NDMA) which was found in the recalled products that include valsartan and its combinations   The recent recall of a common  hypertension drug  in the US due to contamination with a carcinogen has opened up short-term opportunities for a handful of Indian players. The issue with sartan (hypertension drug) began around July, when the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) notified health care professionals of a voluntary recall of several drug products containing the active ingredient valsartan. Valsartan is used to treat high blood pressure and heart failure. The recall was due to an impurity (N-Nitrosodimethylamine or NDMA) which was found in the recalled products that include valsartan and its combinations. According to the USFDA’s list of products under recall, four companies - Teva, Prinston, Torrent, and Hetero - have recalled products containing the valsartan active ingredient. The USFDA also place
Read more