ATF: Indian Streaming Platform, Eros Now to Invest $70 Million in Original Content

Indian OTT service, Eros Now is set to launch a 100 new Originals, Eros Digital COO Ali Hussein revealed to Variety. He is a panelist at Singapore’s Asia TV Forum & Market. Eros Digital is an arm of Bollywood studio Eros International.“Over the last six to nine months what Eros has made known to the rest of the industry that we are looking to scale up our investment in the Eros Now platform,” said Hussein. The company recently launched digital shows “Side Hero” and “Smoke” and a made-for-digital feature “Meri Nimmo,” directed by Bollywood hitmaker Aanand L. Rai, whose Shah Rukh Khan starrer “Zero” is due a Christmas release.Rolling out over the next 18 months will be original digital series, films and short-form content. “We are looking to make more relevant programming for the right kind of audience set in the country,” Hussein said. The total investment in the original content slate will be in the range of $50 to $70 million.“As a company the logic is that we want to be genre agnostic. The comfort space is the work we do in fiction. Non-fiction is not necessarily a natural comfort area, but that’s an area we are trying to learn,” said Hussein.