The Multilingual Era Has Arrived And Here's Why It's A Blessing For Regional Stories

The democratization and diversification of content in the past few years has changed entertainment and mainstream genres, languages, talent pools and formats that were limited to specific demographics once upon a time.

OTT streamers and technology have made unheard stories, unexplored cultures and the work of niche creators accessible to anyone who has a smartphone and an insatiable hunger for entertainment.

A 2022 Forbes article cited an Ormax OTT audience report to state that streaming platform viewership increased from 353.2 million in 2021 to 423.8 million in 2022.

The article also conveyed that these numbers state only a part of the growth story as OTT platforms have just reached 30 per cent of the total population. The real revolution will begin when smaller towns and rural India begin accessing and consuming content. That of course will mean that there will be more regional content than ever before on the menu.

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The shift is already visible

Films like Jeo Baby's Malayalam domestic drama, 'The Great Indian Kitchen,' our own 'Axone' (which for the first time put North-Eastern migrants at the front and centre of a narrative), Tamil thriller 'Suzhal - The Vortex' and Suriya's 'Jai Bheem' were avidly watched by a pan-Indian audience.

The FICCI-EY Report 2022 takes cognisance of these changing consumption habits and has reported that OTT subscribing households will grow to 60 million by 2024. The report also says that the demand for original content will increase to over 4,000 hours by 2024. The share of regional language content on OTT is also slated to be around 54 per cent by 2024. Big numbers indeed.

Hence it is not surprising that most mainstream OTT platforms are today allocating substantial budgets to regional content. In addition, there are many regional platforms in the fray now including Sun NXT (Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi. ), aha (Telugu), Koode (Malayalam), STAGE (Haryanvi), Chaupal (Punjabi, Haryanvi, and Bhojpuri), manoramaMax ¨C (Malayalam), Hoichoi (Bengali), Planet Marathi (Marathi) etc. This tells us where the smart money is betting vis a vis market direction.

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Multilingual content is here to stay

Much before reports informed us that 47% of OTT originals and 69% of films released in 2021 on OTT platforms were not in Hindi, we at Yoodlee had begun exploring regional stories. In 2018, we produced our first Tamil film KD which won a National award and followed it up with Zombivli (Marathi) in 2021, Padavettu (Malayalam), Oye Makhna (Punjabi) and Kaapa (Malayalam) in 2022. Currently, our slate is filled with theatrical projects across languages such as Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Punjabi.

We are now entering the post-euphoric stage of the OTT business, and it is a time of consolidation and rethinking of business models and strategies. I feel one of the emerging strategies is going to be a focus on vernacular content as a way to create inroads to untapped markets, including tier-two and tier-three towns.

The emergence of fresh talent

Audiences today want to consume content in their language and as makers and streamers scramble to cater to them, a fresh crop of writers, actors and makers have emerged. Director Jeo Baby for instance is now making a film with Jyothika and Mammooty and there was a time when he struggled to get a mainstream platform to screen 'The Great Indian Kitchen' till finally, Neestream aired it. The film became a massive OTT hit and eventually Amazon Prime picked it. Now the film is being remade in Tamil.

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Post the commercial success of his 2016 Marathi drama 'Sairat', Nagraj Manjule went on to work with Amitabh Bachchan in 2022's 'Jhund'. The success of 'Drishaym', 'KGF' and 'Baahubali' franchises, and the roaring box-office numbers that films like 'Kantara', 'Pushpa-The Rise' and 'RRR' have garnered have shown that today, linguistic and geographical considerations do not matter if the content is relatable.

The vernacular cinema is a discovery ground for fresh original voices across the gamut of cinematic storytelling and this talent often has the originality that the audience craves.

The time has come for a storytelling revolution

I truly believe that this is a fantastic time to be in the creator economy for long-form content because it is leading to a much-needed evolution in storytelling. The pandemic saw a massive, regional OTT boom and pushed all stakeholders in the entertainment industry out of their comfort zones. The challenge now would be to constantly keep up with the changing viewing patterns of the audience who want to see stories that are strongly rooted narratives and will patronise only that content which is worthy of their hard-earned time and money and doesn't take them for granted.

The future of entertainment in India is not monolithic: it is fluid, inclusive, diverse and all-encompassing like all good stories should be.