Ultra Media & Entertainment to invest Rs 250 crore in next five years in its Marathi OTT platform ‘Ultra Jhakaas’

‘We plan to expand the content catalogue of our new OTT platform, Ultra Jhakaas. We will invest Rs250 crore in the next five years in the platform,” said Sushilkumar Agrawal, CEO of Ultra Media and Entertainment.

The company plans to exclusively release Marathi films on its platform at regular intervals. Agrawal, CEO of Ultra Media and Entertainment said, “To reach out to a wider audience, the platform is also exclusively streaming Hollywood and South-Indian films across all languages dubbed in Marathi. Ultra will also be producing and streaming original content such as web series and films made by prominent directors on the platform.” The company is in discussion with production houses for co-production of fresh content. In the near future, the platform will also stream live events across various genres. These include Marathi theatre plays both in the live and recorded formats.

At present, there are seventeen OTT platforms which provide content in regional languages. Some of the prominent ones are Hoichoi (Bengali), Aha (Telugu), Sun NXT (Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali), Koode (Malayalam), Regal Talkies (Tamil) and Ultra Jhakaas (Marathi). According to a recent industry report by media and entertainment research firm Ormax, close to 30% of India has access to OTT platforms. The subscribers’ base of India’s OTT industry is pegged at 42.38 crore.

It must be noted that only 10% of the total audience of OTT is in the top six metros. This shows the potential for OTT platforms to capture regional language audiences beyond metros. Even OTT platforms are increasing their content in regional languages. According to the FICCI-EY report of 2022, the share of regional languages in overall OTT Video Content in India will grow by two times to 54% in 2024 from 27% in 2020.

In the context of these facts, Ultra Jhakaas plans to scale up its subscribers’ base to five lakh by the end of 2023.