Cellcast Interactive India, the Indian arm of the UK based Cellcast PLC, has an interesting positioning in the new media domain – they’ve partnered with media companies like Sony Entertainment Television and Zee for interactive shows like Bid2Win which they claim has grossed over US $ 1.4 Million in revenues within 6 months of launch (Do see the analysis of this figure by one of our readers Mobstir).
Cellcast has also launched Sumo.in for collecting user generated content that they will source for broadcasters and tied up with the Essel Group for PlayTV – an interactive TV channel. I spoke to Pankaj Thakar, CEO of Cellcast Interactive India about their plans:
Is Cellcast is primarily providing content for TV or do you also intend to do interactive shows for radio, or online?
No, not just TV…We’re looking at 360 degree media. For example, Bollywood Dhamaal is connected by SMS, IVR and WAP. We can take these properties to TV, Print, Radio and the Internet. In eight months, we’ve had over 2 million unique users, and we add around 250,000 a month. Our plan is to launch and run 12 such properties.
I’ve seen Bid2win, and it’s interesting that it’s on more than one channel…
Bid2Win is channel agnostic – it’s on Zee and Sony. You know, what is interesting is the profile of people who are participating in our shows. Mostly, we have people from B and C category cities – like, there are some from a place called Khanna, which I had never heard of before. Around 15 percent of users are students, 18 percent are women, 35 percent are independent business owners. These are people who watch TV after 10:30pm. Like there are shopkeepers who open their shops at 10am or 11am. They tend to stay up late, and there’s not much that you can watch on TV at that time. For Bid2Win, we had a price point of Rs.10, and single users have sent as many as 20 SMS’ for a show.
You’ve launched Sumo.in here. What has been Cellcast’s experience with Sumo.tv, your UK site?
See, what happens is that people in the UK send photos and MMS’ to us, and we aggregate content and choose on the basis of relevance. We then process it – restore it to make it broadcast quality. In fact, we’re developing our own restoration tool. People then download this content via the mobile, so we need to have proper license in place and contact the user for his content. Their IPR is protected. In the UK, we have a 24 hour channel for user generated content.
Are you in talks with anyone for a 24 hour channel?
We’re in talks with everyone, but not for a 24 hour channel yet. We’re going to do shows with user generated content with various channels according to their need for content…we’ll empower TV companies to choose their content.
What is your revenue model?
The revenue model is that the broadcaster pays for content. The revenue received from the broadcaster is then shared by all parties involved. Revenue also comes from the mobile downloads, which is where the operator comes in.
How do you intend to market the content?
The channels will broadcast the shows, and launch consumer campaigns. Once people start watching, they’ll start sending us content. People want their content to be on TV.
By when do you think shows for user generated content will be on air?
The ecosystem will evolve by Q4 of 2007, and there will be some good UGC shows on TV. TV is more accountable and requires moderation.
We’ve mentioned on ContentSutra that there is copyright content on Sumo.in. Do you plan to take it off, and how do you intend to prevent copyright content from being uploaded to the site?
Sumo.in is a search engine for user generated content, so there is no issue of copyright. The onus is on the content owner to identify and claim the content. He has to inform us and then we can either pay him for it and use it, or we can remove it.
Related:
– Cellcast Launches User Generated Content TV; Mostly Aggregation; Copyrighted Clips
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