Voot app eyes 100 mn monthly active users by this fiscal-end

Mumbai: Viacom18's video streaming app Voot is eyeing to double its monthly active users to 100 million by this fiscal-end.

Launched in May 2016, Voot, which claims to be the second biggest OTT platform in the country, has around 50-55 million monthly active users at present.

"Voot has crossed the 100 billion watch minutes' mark in 3 years and we are now targeting 100 million monthly active users within this financial year," Viacom18 Group chief executive officer and managing director Sudhanshu Vats told reporters here.

"Our strategy at Viacom18 is that we want to be screen agnostic, platform agnostic and pipe agnostic story telling content company," he added.

He said the company is segmenting the Voot business the existing advertising led video on demand (AVOD) model and the upcoming freemium offering, Voot Kids and Voot International.

"We are committed to taking this brand forward and building a very strong portfolio under Viacom18 digital ventures. Therefore from one we will be having four distinct businesses as we go forward. Voot is currently the advertising led video on demand service that we have, we are also beta testing Voot Kids in the market," Vats said.

We have gone into UK in partnership with Virgin but that is just the starting and you will see us in a very calibrated but conscious fashion going all across the world.

In the second half of this year we will be offering Voot freemium, he added.

He further said Voot Kids could be launched in the next few months and the product would be behind paywall and Voot would look at entering US.

The platform would be launching over 30 originals across genres and languages, this fiscal.

The company has also launched Voot Studios, a content tech solution for advertisers.

"Brands today realise regular ad spot while important is not sufficient to drive resonance with the consumer.

Branded content solutioning is hence the way forward given that it allows for bespoke content curation and subtle communication embedded into the narrative of the show," Voot Head AVOD Business Akash Banerji said.

Voot Studios will allow brands to bring the world of story-telling, data and tech all together to deliver the brand message and the return on investment effectively for the business, Banerji said.