Timing it with Children’s Day, Viacom18 launched Voot Kids, a multi-purpose application for children with over 20,000 e-books, videos, games, quizzes and audio stories. Saugato Bhowmik, Business Head, Voot Kids, Viacom18 talks about the ad-free subscription model, expansion plans and brand marketing strategy of the app to target over 107 million households with kids in the 2-10 years age group.
ON PROVIDING AD-FREE CONTENT AND REVENUE MODEL:
We have no ads on the Voot Kids app as it is entirely based on a subscription model where users will have a 30-day free trial followed by a monthly paid subscription pack of Rs 99 or an annual pack of Rs 799. It is always going to be ad-free. If we provide great value to parents, they will reward us to create a
successful business.
ON THE CONTENT FOCUS:
The focus is to create India’s first multi-format, parent-controlled safe app which entertains, engages, enriches and enables. We noticed that 15% of our daily viewers on Voot were engaged in kids’ content which made us investigate the kids category and think of a larger opportunity. We have curated a library of over 20,000 e-books, 200+ characters, audio stories, quizzes and parental control service for a fun-learning engagement in Hindi, English and five regional languages.
ON BRAND PARTNERSHIPS:
We have seen a lot of partner interests from tech, TV, OEMs, and other brands who realise that this space is worth investing in and having it on their platforms will drive a lot of conversions for them. This will be a separate line of business that will add to the revenue. We have received the Early Childhood Association (ECA) accreditation and we will talk to multiple schools about the need for such progressive fun
learning capabilities.
ON THE WAY FORWARD AND EXPANSION PLANS:
Voot Kids is a pan-India app so we are targeting all markets. We will also be looking at expanding to South Asia soon. With our advertising campaign ‘Masti mein Achchai’, we are planning to target over 100 million households with kids in the 2 to 10 years age group.
ON THE MARKETING STRATEGY:
We are going to initiate cross-media marketing through TV, digital, on-ground and influencers. It is going to be an integrated marketing campaign through the power of Viacom18 media network. We are going to break with our mass media campaign soon and follow that up with on-ground media and school
contact programmes.
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