There's something big for India in Chhota Bheem

by Abhay Vaidya The world of children’s entertainment in India has been experiencing nothing short of a historic breakthrough that has been in-the-making for a few years now. Just as the pioneering Indian comics creator, Anant Pai’s Amar Chitra Katha, went on to become a household name after competing against Phantom, Mandrake and Richie Rich, something equally phenomenal has been happening on Indian television. After decades of unparalleled dominance by the Disney characters, Tom & Jerry, followed in recent years by the Japanese Shin Chan, Doraemon and Hagemaru, it is the Indian animated character Chhota Bheem who has edged them all out to become the reigning favourite on kid’s television. A TAM Media Research Survey on television viewership for the first week of 2012 listed POGO as the leading kids’ channel and identified Chhota Bheem and Mr. Bean as the top programmes watched by kids and their parents. Its mid-2011 survey had estimated a viewership of 34.73 million children for Chhota Bheem in India. [caption id=“attachment_251803” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Screenshot from the official website.”]  [/caption] In April 2011, Ormax Media’s Kids’ Favourite Ranking study ‘Small Wonders’ reported that Chhota Bheem had grabbed the top position as kids’ favourite character, leading by 37 percent over the previous year’s top-ranker, Doraemon, who had been displaced to the second position followed by Jerry at No.3. Small Wonders is the bi-annual syndicated ranking for the most popular kids’ characters conducted among children in the 6-14 age groups in various cities in India. This Sunday (March 25), POGO will celebrate its latest success by premiering Chhota Bheem: Dholakpur to Katmandu on its channel. Created by the Hyderabad-based Green Gold Animation and telecast by its co-producer Turner International on its POGO channel, Chhota Bheem was introduced in 2008. Based on the mythological Bhima in the Mahabharata, the setting is the imaginary kingdom of Dholakpur which faces one crisis after another and is rescued by its young hero with his invincible strength and cleverness. Just as Popeye gets his burst of energy from emptying cans of spinach, for Chhota Bheem, it is laddoos made by the fat and likeable Tun Tun. Bigger in size than Chhota Bheem is the older child Kalia who always wants to outsmart Bheem. However, Kalia, followed by his lackeys Dholu and Bholu, ends up getting caught in a spot and is always rescued by the good-natured Bheem. The adventures are imaginative and sometimes they move to other countries such as China and Japan and become all the more entertaining with their localised settings, new characters, unusual costumes and music. Such is the appeal of this series that kids and their parents are often found watching back-to-back episodes together, without getting tired. Clearly, the combination of a catchy storyline and familiar Indian setting has worked, and worked wonders. The success of Chhota Bheem along with other animated characters has helped POGO emerge as the highest watched kids channel in India, since its launch in 2004. In 2009, this series won CNBC TV’s Gold Cursor Animation Award 2009 in the ‘best animated TV series” category. Alongside this serial, Green Gold created other popular animated Indian serials such as Chor & Police, Vikram Betaal, Krishna Balram and the Krishna movie series. The character has been successfully launched in Indonesia and the Middle East and its creators have been keen to keen to crack open the promising European and American markets. Green Gold’s founder and managing director Rajiv Chilaka told an interviewer that after Chhota Bheem’s participation in the Asian TV Forum and MIPCOM (TV and entertainment market’s global meet) at Cannes in 2010, the series was invited for distribution in a dozen global markets. Expansion plans include innovative merchandising campaigns and introduction of more than 100 products in toys, clothing, gifts and publishing. The new frontier of digital media and mobile applications is also offering a huge growth potential for Chhota Bheem and games based on the character are popular on www.pogo.tv. In an interview last month, BestMediaInfo.com quoted Monica Tata, Turner International India’s general manager (Entertainment Networks, South Asia), as stating that the viewership for kids’ entertainment channel had grown over the years from 16.9% in 2010 to 18.3% in 2011. Latest trends showed a shift in preference from English to Hindi and a rise in the ad spend in the kids genre. This growth coupled with the success of serials like Chhota Bheem bodes well for the Indian animation industry, which in its totality, is projected to achieve a compounded annual growth of 30% according to a 2010 study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM). There’s a new world waiting to be conquered out there.