Social: Viu India's web series shows how OTT platforms are turning to socially relevant content

The internet audience in India is a massive 440 million millennials who are driving the web series content and are said to be a compelling consumer force for the next 20 years.  Brands and Bollywood A-listers too have taken notice of the demography and are reaching out to the audience that wants things to be different. [caption id=“attachment_4025727” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Rana Daggubati at the launch of Viu’s Social[/caption] With Amazon Prime Video India and Netflix being joined by Viu, Voot, Alt Balaji, Sony Liv and many more, the OTT space has boomed in India. “While initially there were independent players acting as content curators, today broadcasters have their own digital platform to cater to the internet-savvy audience. There is no doubt that the platform is being aggressively marketed, be it in the form of TV ads, hoardings or free subscription offered to subscribers,” said Patho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC India to Exchange 4 Media_._ While most players are looking to provide entertainment that falls midway between Hindi programming of general entertainment channels and western content, the new breed of programming hitting smartphones and laptop is increasingly reflecting social reality and actual concerns of the target audience. Rana Dagubatti, who is playing a technology tycoon in a social media thriller on Viu India’s web series Social, signals this change in content, “The idea of being able to tell a story beyond cinema, beyond television in this new world is what first excited me. Here you are not bound by two-and-a-half hours of getting it done. If you have a character that has to grow, it will keep growing. My character in  Social  is a visionary, an idealist who sees the good in people even though he is up against fellow corporate giants. He thrives on honesty and transparency, both in and out of his organisation,” said the Baahubali star. Other shows making a social impact like Social are YRF’s Man’s World, a show where men and women have interchanged their place in the society leading to exploration of feminist themes in a unique series, and TVF’s Tripling which showcases the contemporary issues faced by three different siblings of the same family, from a male divorcee in his thirties to the traditional expectations of a young woman married in today’s society, the show chronicles each sibling’s growth through a road trip across the country. Dice Media’s hit show What the Folks examines the dynamics of an urban married couple, their middle class parents’ quirks and a young sister’s attempts at finding independence from all the madness that is created in this comedy of errors.