Press
Interview with Dhawal Gusain
1. What have you been busy with lately?
It's been a great start to the year for us, with our 5 new web-series already out from the TVF stable in 2018, and another 10-12 slated for release later this year. TVF recently debuted at Cannes with our new upcoming title, Immature - we were the only Indian creator in the Official Selection at Canneseries. With the success of our web-series with audiences and award shows, we're focused on expanding the markets we reach with our content, as well as exploring new content formats.
2. Could you give us a little background about The Viral Fever?
We are leaders in digital entertainment in India. TVF was one of the first-movers creating great storytelling on the web for young Indians - we were the first to create an Indian web-series, and one of the biggest players in the Indian branded content market. What sets TVF apart in the Indian viewers' minds is the emphasis we lay on creating relevant stories - our content doesn't expect the audience to suspend belief to the point that it stops making sense. We create stories that are true to life and strike a chord with our audiences.
3. You are targeting mainly a young audience: how does TV fare with this audience?
Young India doesn't watch TV for fiction entertainment - the fare on TVs is still in the old soap opera mould which holds very little for the millennial Indian audiences. Increased internet penetration means that the Indian youth is watching everything from How I Met Your Mother to House of Cards - getting their entertainment directly from the web. For these heavy internet users, the appointment viewing demands of TV is losing its charm. Creators in India have taken note of this, and the number of web-series titles has grown from about 5-8 in 2016 to an expected number of 100 in 2018. TV is mainly for live sports & news, although as the OTT market in India matures, with players like Hotstar, Jio, Amazon Prime, this behaviour is also shifting rapidly.
4. How do you see the future of TV in India as compared to webbased services?
With increased web-based services, TV is losing a bit of ground especially on mainstays like Live sports. The premier TV event of the year in India, IPL, has come to parity in terms of viewership on TV & online. 4G internet penetration is growing rapidly in India, and the online entertainment infrastructure is maturing with more players and better web-series. Everyone from telecom service providers, television players, web-first creators and OTT providers has put their skin in the game of web-based content. The cord-cutting phenomenon has arrived, and TV will have to reinvent its offerings in India to keep pace with web-based services.
5. Books and published content: What role do these play in your business?
Adaptations in India are an exciting new prospect for web-content. Some new titles issued here deal with the real, socially relevant conversations that our content likes to explore in a sensitive way. There are some exciting new authors in India that we'd love to work with soon. We're also discussing with some of the top global publishers to extend our IPs for a reading audience.
6. What is your personal bestseller in book and video/filmed content from India?
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini and the works of Premchand. Among films, recently, Dangal, and Indian movie adaptations of Shakespeare like Omkara, Maqbool, while Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron is an Indian comedy classic.
Dhawal Gusain will be speaking at the StoryDrive conference in Beijing (28 May - 1 June 2018).
