The Balaji Telefilms owned video on demand platform, ALT Balaji has major plans to invest up to Rs 500 crore over the next three years. The Reliance-Jio backed company aims to make its content offerings strong and sturdy.
The subscription-based video platform began to operate last year in April and now its objective is to highly increase its customer base and double the number of subscribers from 2.8 million currently to over 8 million by 2021, excluding the Jio customers.
“We plan to invest Rs 150-170 crore every year, out of which 70% would be invested in strengthening our content offerings. Over the next 3 years, we plan to invest Rs 450-500 crore,” said Nachiket Pantvaidya, CEO of ALTBalaji.
The CEO also stated that almost 95 percent of the content on ALT Balaji is original and further the platform is planning to introduce 45 to 50 more shows in the coming two years’ time. He claims that they are investing in high-quality content and have plans to reach the subscriber base of 8 million.
Currently, the platform has 21 original shows and gets 60 percent friction from cities outside the top-four metros. In July this year, Reliance Industries purchased 25 percent stake in Balaji Telefilms for about Rs 413 crore. ALTBalaji claims to offer a total of 32 shows and over 250 hours of entertainment.
The funds raised by Reliance were expected to be utilized in speeding up content development initiatives, especially for ALTBalaji, to help it compete with other global and Indian over-the-top (OTT) service providers. And thus, it seems that the company is now gearing up to improve and enhance on various aspects and give a tough fight to the other video platforms in the country.