How many times have you seen a movie and wondered ‘what if the movie had ended in a different way’? This is exactly the thought that the one year old digital channel Shudh Desi Endings (SDE) had in mind when it was launched as a Bollywood spoof video channel on online streaming platforms.
SDE is the brainchild of co-founders Anand Doshi (chief creative officer), Sudhir Bagul (chief strategy officer) and Jagdish Thakkar (chief financial officer). With over 1.48 lakh subscribers, the channel has grown solely on the basis of its animated spoofs of popular Bollywood videos, the latest offering being the Aamir Khan starrer PK. SDE is a part of Click Digital Studios (CDS), a content production company that has over 65 YouTube channels.
The idea for SDE came from the Hollywood YouTube channel How it should have ended. “We thought this space was open in Bollywood and would be fun to experiment. The idea is to play around with the endings of movies. Going forward, we will be looking at expanding our portfolio apart from spoofing movies,” says Anand speaking to AnimationXpress.com.
The newest inclusion in SDE is ‘Sachin Ka Sixer’ in which an animated Sachin will interview celebrities such as Barack Obama and Akshay Kumar. A separate channel under CDS Kids TV called ‘The Johnson Family’ has been recently launched with interactive learning for kids aged 2-8 years.
The 5-7 minute animated spoofs are executed by a team of 15 that include sketching artists, background designers, compositors, animation experts, voiceover artists, a creative writing team and the editor; and the intention is to spruce up the team with 10 additional pairs of hands.
A typical spoof video takes about 10-12 days to create right from watching the movie to ideating to creating. “The objective is to have a video out every week because people are craving for fresh content. Which is why we are introducing more formats such as funny interviews with Sachin Ka Sixer,” points out Anand. There is also a recently introduced ‘Shudh Desi Raps’ section that pits two celebrities against each other to rap.
The end of the month will see another format ‘What if’ launch, which will have hypothetical scenarios of known personalities such as ‘What if Modi is playing the world cup’ or ‘What if Superman was in a Mumbai local train’. These animated clips will be only two minutes long and are created using softwares like Adobe Flash, Aftereffects and FCP.
The self-funded company has already reached breakeven point and is currently considering private equity proposals. The videos also have in-branding by Vidmate and UCBrowser, apart from YouTube monetisation. It recently tied up with IIT-B’s Mood-Indigo as the ‘Humour Partner’ and is looking at more such partnerships in the coming days.
Four months ago, CDS expanded into USA with its first international office in New York. Named Hash Digital Studios, the six member team has been got in to produce animated content, mainly from Hollywood. The next level is to expand in Southern India. Currently SDE has 75 per cent of its traffic coming from mobile and 60 per cent of its audience being male. The traffic is also skewed at 60:40 in terms of India to global viewers.