PlayVerse, a licensing and entertainment company that had recently launched its animation IP Penelope, crossed the 75,000+ subscribers mark and 11 million views within just four months of the launch. Available in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Bangla, Penelope is a popular French book series that has sold more than three million copies so far and it has then been licensed by Nippon Animation, Japan to launch a full-fledged animation series across the world. As per data, the Bengali version saw the maximum number of subscribers followed by the Hindi and Telugu version.
Parents between the ages of 25-34 subscribed to Penelope, the most with subscribers from Karnataka holding the maximum percentage of return viewers. The regional focus of Penelope is to further solidify the company’s vision of striving to bring the best of Japanese animation and make it more interactive with the power of storytelling for Indian consumers across age segments. Penelope is currently available on YouTube as PlayVerse continues to explore regional TV channels and OTT partners to license the content.
According to the FICCI-EY media and entertainment industry report (March 2021), regional languages will make up 60 per cent of television consumption by 2025. Localising content has been a way forward for the industry as it helps in widening the reach of the audience and helps in building a personalised experience for the viewer. With Penelope, available in five languages across India, it is becoming a medium for parents to introduce children to their native language and create a cultural environment for them.
PlayVerse founder Jaineel Aga on Penelope reaching 75,000+ subscribers within four months said, “Penelope’s realistic optimism, playfulness, curiosity and willingness to learn makes her the perfect character to narrate stories to children. We wanted to reach out to the regional audience and provide children with an opportunity to view content in their native language. We are very happy to see a positive response from the audience for Penelope in such a short span of time especially with so many competitors. Building on the success of regional languages, we will soon be launching the English channel of Penelope as well.”
Penelope has been published in 11 countries and the animation IP is broadcasted in 19 countries worldwide spanning four seasons and 80 episodes.
