Chhota Bheem and other popular animated IPs from the house of Green Gold Animation are foraying into podcasts! One of the pioneers in original Indian animation content, Green Gold has partnered with music streaming app, Gaana to host its kids content catalogue exclusively on its platform.
Green Gold Animation founder and CEO Rajiv Chilaka commented about this deal, “This collaboration with Gaana will make it easy for millions of Indian kids to discover and consume our great content made with love by making our catalogue directly available on Gaana. We are thrilled at the prospect of being able to make our way into the playlists of millions of young Indian minds and look forward to serving them their favourite shows across both video and audio OTT formats.”
With this collaboration, Gaana emerges as India’s first music streaming app with a comprehensive kid’s content catalogue featuring Chhota Bheem, Mighty Raju, Krishna Balram (from Green Gold) and other iconic homegrown animated characters.
Kids sector attracts over 60 million audiences every month on streaming platforms. This unique partnership will see the popular Dholakpur hero come with exclusive stories and adventures, said Chilaka.
“People have moved to podcasts extensively to fit into their busy schedule. We want to tap into audiences who are not on TV, OTT and other digital platforms; so Gaana will be the best way to connect with them. We are going to create exclusive stories with the music streaming platform and are awaiting the response for our first season, which we recently launched. We are awaiting a go-ahead to stream all the episodes that we have created to date. We are yet to decide on who will be directing it.,” he told AnimationXpress.
Over the past few years, the shows produced by the animation studio have been hugely popular across all leading OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Voot as well as well known kids TV channels like Cartoon Network, Pogo, Discovery Kids, Hungama and Disney, drawing an active viewership of over 60 million Indian children. The sweeping popularity of these characters have transcended linguistic and generational barriers in creating a lasting impression in the minds of the Indian audience. Its Mighty Little Bheem (first Indian animated Netflix Original) has enjoyed a record-breaking success globally. Now the studio is expanding the animated property into licensing and merchandising.
The ready availability of this content as a part of Gaana’s non-music audio catalogue would be a game-changer in offering the brand the edge in the OTT kids entertainment segment.
Commenting on this association, Gaana CEO Prashan Agarwal added in an official statement, “Podcasts have the potential to be among the most popular mainstream non-music genres in our country owing to their ability to create a long-standing bond with listeners. At Gaana, we have been investing steadily in this space with our Podcast Originals, and have now taken it up a notch with our partnership with Green Gold Studios that would engage our young users with their favourite shows without any of the negative impacts of long hours of consistent TV viewing. This is a landmark in our vision to host the country’s widest and most diverse non-music audio library by the end of FY ’21.”
Gaana currently hosts shows and podcasts in multiple languages spanning across 21 categories like comedy, storytelling, devotional, motivational, kids, lifestyle and culture among others. These are a part of the brand’s vision to house the country’s widest and most diverse range of original audio content by the end of FY (fiscal year) 2021.