ALTBalaji to enhance biz with Rs 500 cr investment over 3 years

Reliance Jio-backed Balaji Telefilms' video on demand platform ALTBalaji plans to invest up to Rs 500 crore over the next three years, majority of which will be to strengthen its content offerings.

ALTBalaji, which began operations in April last year, is aiming to more than double its subscriber base to over 8 million (excluding Jio customers) by 2021 from 2.8 million at present.

"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 ALTBalaji CEO Nachiket Pantvaidya.

At present, ALTBalaji has 21 original shows on its platform. It is aiming to launch 45 to 50 shows in the next two years.

"About 95% of the content on ALTBalaji is original. We are planning to launch 45 to 50 original shows in the next two years. We are investing in good quality content and we aim to reach subscriber base of over 8 million by 2021," Pantvaidya said.

Pantvaidya said ALTBalaji gets 60% of traction is from cities outside the top-four metros.

In July 2017, Reliance Industries bought 25% stake in Balaji Telefilms for Rs 413 crore. The company had then announced that this investment would be utilised to speed up content development initiatives, especially for ALTBalaji, to help it compete with other global and Indian over-the-top (OTT)ril service providers.

ALTBalaji claims to offer an inventory of 32 shows and over 250 hours of entertainment.