iWorld
Indian OTT platforms dish out special fare for kids
MUMBAI: Streaming services have started taking the central stage of entertainment in Indian living rooms for quite a while now, catalysed more by the Covid2019 crisis. But it’s not possible to lay a strong foundation if the new-age entertainers don’t have anything in store for those loved little ones. While YouTube with numerous kids’ channels has been reigning supreme over others for quite a while, the game is changing as over-the-top (OTT) platforms pay their attention to kids programming with new strategies. Along with international players, leading home-grown players have also made strides towards building noticeable offerings in the vertical.
On last children's day, Viacom18’s VOOT, one of the major home-grown services in India, launched a dedicated service VOOT Kids, despite having a good portfolio of kids’ content on the main service. Rather than limiting it to entertainment, the new subscription-based service is a combination of fun and learning. VOOT Kids business head Saugato Bhowmik said the service started showing very good results from December onwards. Followed by customer acquisition, the journey from free trials to paid subscribers also started climbing significantly till February. From the mid-March when children started staying home, VOOT Kids’ daily subscriber additions jumped 6X from the pre-lockdown period.
“In fact, in the early days of April, the peak we reached was nine times of pre-lockdown period. We were adding nine times and then we stabilized at about six times. So, the user base has expanded dramatically. Secondly, the time spent on the platform has also grown dramatically. So we already started this platform with a very high time spent, 70 minutes per viewer per day in December itself. Now 70 minutes is higher than most other OTT platforms. Today that number stands at 95 minutes, even some days it touched a hundred minutes,” Bhowmik added. The numbers shared by him relate to VOOT’s separate venture in kids’ space.
Another leading OTT player in the country also revealed a hefty line-up of kids content recently; ZEE5 launched ZEE5 Kids, a dedicated section within the app. “It becomes an integral part of the content offering that we need to have on the platform, so it becomes holistic in nature. We are coming with hyper sports, there are kids content, premium content, direct-digital movies, there are movie premiers, catch-up content, news content. In that sense, there is something for everybody. Kids are an important target group that we needed to address on ZEE5,” said ZEE5 India programming head Aparna Acharekar commented.
Acharekar mentioned that even before launching the section, the platform had kids content. It saw good viewership coming from limited hours of kids’ content leading to a full-fledged vertical, she said. However, both ZEE5 and VOOT Kids are not limiting the content bouquet to entertainment, but a blend of fun and learning.
ShemarooMe, one of the newest entrants in the OTT race, is also focusing on the vertical. “At Shemaroo, we have always kept the preferences of audiences at the core of our offerings and our kids’ content is a high point for us with a special emphasis on learning about the rich Indian heritage, culture and values, which distinguishes us. The kids’ content on ShemarooMe is for a wider age group of two to 14 years, with focus on Indian mythology, stories, Indian personalities and early learning too. The kids’ genre has always been under-indexed,” Shemaroo Entertainment Animation, Digital Kids and L&M senior vice president Smita Maroo said.
“However, the current situation has seen a growth in the overall kids’ genre across all platforms. Kids’ content on OTT platform helps in bringing the entire family together in consuming content which has seen a significant rise. There has been a spike of nearly 100 per cent in the viewership and the consumption has nearly doubled on kids’ movies and edutainment content since lockdown,” she added.
Although international platforms lack content in local languages, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+Hotstar have a significant amount of programming for the younger audience. Moreover, Disney+ recently making itself available in India has opened up a humongous amount of classics for the children. While Netflix has upped its local content in India, it has rolled very few original kids content in India. But in the limited store, Mighty Little Bheem has emerged as the most-watched preschool series on the service globally, and the second-most-watched kids’ series for the service worldwide. Released on Netflix in April 2019, it has now been watched by 27 million households around the world. The global streaming giant has also announced another animated show Ghee Happy.
ZEE5’s Acharekar highlighted an important aspect: there is a great opportunity to create content for pre-teen age groups in the Indian market. While there is content like Chota Bheem for the younger age group, there is not much content available for the nine to 14 age group. While acknowledging that international content which has been created for those age groups coming to the country, she noted that there is a limitation of language.
“When you want to target nine to 14 years’ age groups, we need to serve content for them in languages they are comfortable with. In that sense, certain pockets of the kids segment are underserved. There are opportunities to do better in regional languages and catering to Indian sensibility and creating more Indian viewers,” she added.
VOOT Kids’ Bhowmik said that the space was underserved but now more and more players are coming in. He said that the ecosystem would only build more because kids need different solutions. Amid the rising competition, he is confident that VOOT Kids will always remain differentiated because of its approach to kids and solving their problems. He also added that the service is adding a lot more features in the next 90 days.
ZEE5, on the other hand, intends to get into user-generated content for kids also. Describing its nature, Acharekar added that it could show auditions, talents that children can come forward and showcase on the platform. She also noted that they are building at the backend a very safe technology for children; so when they launch UGC, parents will find the platform safe to let their children be and brands realize it as a best bet.
“As a content house, we continuously check the consumption patterns and trends in the kids’ space and plan our content pipeline accordingly while Indianness and Indian culture-inspired content always remain at the core of our hearts. We have a rich slate of films, shows and some very interesting edutainment content in the pipeline,” Shemaroo’s Maroo said.
Yes, children will not fall out of options despite the exponential increase in screen time.
iWorld
Bill Ackman makes a $64bn bid for Universal Music Group
The hedge fund boss wants to list the world’s biggest record label in New York and thinks he knows exactly what ails it
NEW YORK: Bill Ackman wants to buy the world’s biggest record label. Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by the billionaire investor, submitted a non-binding proposal on Tuesday to acquire all outstanding shares of Universal Music Group in a business combination transaction worth roughly $64.4 billion (around 55.8 billion euros).
Under the terms of the offer, UMG shareholders would receive 9.4 billion euros in cash, equivalent to 5.05 euros per share, plus 0.77 shares of a newly created company, dubbed New UMG, for each share held. Pershing Square values the total package at 30.40 euros per share, a 78 per cent premium to UMG’s closing price on April 2.
The deal would see UMG merge with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, with the combined entity incorporating as a Nevada corporation and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. New UMG would publish financial statements under US GAAP and become eligible for S&P 500 index inclusion. Pershing Square says the transaction is expected to close by year-end, with all equity financing backstopped by Ackman’s firm and its affiliates, and all debt financing committed at signing. The transaction would cancel 17 per cent of UMG’s outstanding shares, leaving New UMG with 1.541 billion shares outstanding.
Ackman has a long history with UMG. Pershing Square first bought approximately 10 per cent of the company from Vivendi in the summer of 2021 for around $4 billion, around the time of UMG’s listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. He has since trimmed that position, raising around $1.4 billion from the sale of a 2.7 per cent stake in March 2025, and resigned from UMG’s board in May 2025, citing new executive and board obligations arising from recent investments.
His diagnosis of UMG’s troubles is blunt. The company’s stock has fallen around 33 per cent over the past twelve months on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, and Ackman lays out six reasons why. These include uncertainty around the Bolloré Group’s 18 per cent stake in the company, the postponement of UMG’s US listing, the underutilisation of UMG’s balance sheet, the absence of a publicly disclosed capital allocation plan and earnings algorithm, a failure to reflect UMG’s 2.7 billion euro stake in Spotify in its valuation, and what Ackman calls suboptimal shareholder investor relations, communications and engagement.
The Bolloré stake has long cast a shadow over the company. Cyrille Bolloré stepped down from UMG’s board in July 2025 as the Bolloré Group battled the French financial markets regulator over its stake in Vivendi, which holds a further capital interest in UMG. UMG had confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2025 for a proposed secondary listing in America, but put those plans on hold in March 2026, citing market conditions.
Ackman has kind words for UMG’s management, at least. “Since UMG’s listing, Lucian Grainge and the company’s management have done an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance,” he said. But he made his diagnosis plain: “UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”
In other words, Ackman believes UMG is a great business trapped inside a broken structure. If the board agrees, he intends to fix that, loudly and in New York.
