It is said that if content is the king, then creativity is the queen. In India, both seem to have joined hands in The Viral Fever Videos, an online channel that debuted in February 2012 and is now set for a major expansion.
In the last three years, satirical videos from The Viral Fever (TVF) on contemporary issues and integrating brand themes have gained a sort of cult status.
In February, subscriptions crossed one million after it posted Barely Speaking with Arnub featuring Arvind Kejriwal, hours before the counting for the Delhi assembly poll began.
Till date, the video has been viewed more than 3.3 million times on Google Inc.’s video sharing website YouTube. Incidentally, YouTube turned 10 years in February.
“Every February, we get a viral,” says Arunabh Kumar, a 32-year-old IIT graduate and the brain behind the venture.
Buoyed by the viewership benchmark, TVF’s parent company and content creation studio The Viral Fever Media Labs is now gearing up to add more shows and channels.
In June, it will launch two news shows, including a talk show hosted by former UTV chief executive officer Ronnie Screwvala. For all this, the company plans to go for a big round of funding in the next few months, said Kumar. “We are constantly trying to evolve in our programming and content strategy,” he said.
In May, Kumar met top executives of global media companies such as Suroosh Alvi, co-founder of VICEmagazine and Ricky Van Veen, co-founder of comedy website CollegeHumor, to explore possible projects together. The venue was the Global Top Creators’ Summit, organized by YouTube in New York and attended by companies such as Universal Studios Inc. and BuzzFeed Inc.
“It was a privilege for TVF to be the only Indian content creator in this summit, as it had always been the ambition of the group to make an impact globally in all forms of media and content. It is very fulfilling to see our dream come true,” said Kumar.
Kumar has certainly come a long way from the days when he used to work on movie sets and wrote scripts for television shows that never took shape. He decided to go on his own when he realized that the “Indian youth alienated from the television culture” needed a new platform.
“I used to visit a host of colleges to give talks about alternative career streams students can pick (from), and that’s where I became aware of the fact that nobody is watching fiction- scripted television in our country. Our entire generation between 18 and 34 years (age-group) has been alienated from the television culture, thanks to Ekta Kapoor,” said Kumar.
So, he started by asking people around him about what was the last memorable thing seen on television. “For all youngsters, the answer was either a match or news or Roadies—for both young boys and girls,” said Kumar, who has worked as an assistant director on the sets of Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om.
Initially, he wanted to create television shows for youth. But television networks such as MTV, Bindass and Channel V rejected his plans based on their market research that Indian youth is not ready for his humourous content. And so he turned to Internet.
“I was sitting alone on my table after Q-tiyappa (a show based on college humour) got rejected by MTV. No one was getting what I wanted. I wanted to have my own television channel. Seven days later, I realized I didn’t have the money to start one. On the Internet, I stumbled upon channels such as onion.com, break.com, CollegeHumor.com. And CollegeHumor became my closest peer reference,” he recalled.
While Kumar kept working on his online video creations, he also made branded content. The Viral Fever Media Labs then used to create ‘virals’ or digital online content for brands and functioned like a production house. At present, it has business interests in live events, branded content, television shows and production services.
Kumar first learnt about branded content in 2009 during his advertising stint. “Lot of people from India went to Cannes (a global advertising event) and heard of this word ‘branded content’. They came back and said let’s do it. And I was a novice that time who was freelancing in an ad agency. Josy Paul, whom I call my tormentor, not mentor, had just started his agency BBDO. That’s where I picked up this work and did branded content for brands such as Gillette. That word viral always stayed with me,” said Kumar.
Paul, chairman and chief creative officer at advertising agency BBDO India, first met Kumar in 2004 when he interned at David, an ad agency that Paul owned then. “At first, I wondered what a superstar IIT student was doing in an offbeat guerilla like David. But Arunabh was a challenger too. His ideas were fresh. He had his own unique point of view about things,” said Paul.
Today, TVF’s online presence —1.2 million subscribers, three channels, 135 videos, more than 100 million views—could be a matter of envy for media barons who are all trying to crack the digital code. The company claims it generated Rs.4 crore in revenue in 2014-15, starting from June last year. Mint could not independently verify this.
“With TVF, Arunabh found his groove, his rhythm, his voice. His brand of humour and storytelling has come alive now. The output is prodigious and the content is so engaging,” said Paul.
The future is bright for online content categories such as music and humour, which according to Neeraj Roy, managing director and chief executive officer at Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, a digital services agency, are made for digital consumption.
“Despite 800 TV channels, we still don’t have the exception of a Comedy Central; the same is true for music channels. People like to consume local and original content in such genres. Creators like TVF are bringing that to the fore. Going forward, we will see more professional talent come to such portals,” said Roy.
He said the market for online videos is still nascent in India when it comes to ad dollars with sponsorship deals ranging from Rs.2 lakh to Rs.6 lakh.
Digital advertising revenue in India is expected to grow by 37% to reach Rs.4,661 crore in 2015, according to GroupM, the media buying and planning agency of WPP Inc.
TVF currently is working with freecharge.com and commonfloor.com, among others, for content creation. “We were probably the first partners with them for theEmotional Atya-Charge video (a spoof of reality showEmotional Atyachaar). We were the sole sponsors. Without any big marketing spends, we reached over a million views,” said Alok Goel, chief executive at online mobile recharge firm freecharge.com.
TVF has been disruptive in the online ecosystem with its brand-content integration strategy. “In-your-face branded content doesn’t work for audience looking to watch quality content online. But at TVF, we try to make our protagonists consumers of the brand (in question) and weave that into the show’s narrative. These are subtle references and keep the users hooked to the storyline,” said Kumar.
Commonfloor.com, an online real estate portal, has signed a five-episode deal for a series called Permanent Roommates.The portal approached TVF to create a show in which its brand was integrated with the content of the show.Permanent Roommates was a fiction-based show about a couple who finally take the plunge to move in together and the commonfloor app featured in the episode helps them find a suitable apartment. “We definitely want to encourage people who are creating content on YouTube. TVF did some phenomenal work and the show crossed more than 7 million hits cumulatively,” said Sumit Jain, co founder and CEO of commonfloor.com. Today, TVF has more than 100 employees including a 20-member team of IIT graduates from multiple centres. It has offices in Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai, and hopes to be the HBO of the online world. “We should become profitable this year,” said Kumar.
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