Cosmos Maya, the Singapore and Mumbai based leading animation studio and producer of original Indian animation content, today announced its business diversification initiatives for future growth. Having carved its niche as a successful creator of IPs in the kids’ content space, the company is on a massive growth path and this is the first among many of its strategic growth initiatives.
Beginning 2016, the company has started its digital video outfit, WowKidz as a YouTube exclusive channel, where the content from their successful shows is being played. With almost 1,60,000 active subscribers and around 200 million cumulative views within a few quarters since launch, WowKidz is one of the fastest growing video platform for kids’ content; driven purely through organic growth.
The company has a two-pronged approach to successfully tackle the digital revolution; first is to strengthen its presence on YouTube, the world’s largest video platform through its constantly growing existing content bank and produce high-quality original Indian animation for the recently launched and upcoming kids’ VOD platforms.
“Content consumption is changing dramatically in the digital era and the barriers of geographies are breaking. We at Cosmos-Maya are keen to produce good original content for the global VOD platforms that will bring in the best of Indian animation content for kids of Indian origin all over the world,” said Cosmos-Maya, CEO, Anish Mehta.
The content ecosystem is evolving by the day and newer touch points are essential for consumers to engage with brands in order to build brand loyalty. WowKidz, both as the video platform and as a merchandising avenue are thereby the logical brand initiatives as part of the growth strategy of Cosmos-Maya.
Taking a step by step growth approach, the company has started off the merchandising division with offline products sales inspired by their IPs and also online sales of their merchandise across all the leading e-commerce portals. The next brand growth for WowKidz is a dedicated e-commerce platform of its own, ‘www.wowkidz.com’ which will have a mega launch in third quarter of 2016, coinciding with the biggest Indian festival, Diwali. “The idea behind these initiatives is to make the value proposition for our content more robust, and create more avenues to link the IP creation process with the IP monetisation. Kids want to buy the merchandise inspired by the shows that they consume and thus these initiatives have been taken in tandem with each other,” adds Mehta.
Apart from the merchandise inspired from the Cosmos-Maya’s own IPs, including the successful shows like Motu Patlu, Shiva, Kisna, Eena Meena Deeka and ViR – The Robot Boy, wowkidz.com will also provide the best of merchandise products from the best animated shows on television, available at the click of a button. The popular third party merchandise includes products inspired by many successful animation shows, including all time classic animation shows Mickey Mouse, Tom & Jerry, Barbie; other renowned brands like Hello Kitty, Hotwheels; shows popular with Indian kids like Chhota Bheem, Doraemon, Ben10 and global superheroes like Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Avengers to name a few.
World over, it is the IP monetisation that drives the animation production and India as a market too is evolving now. With the advent of e-commerce, the availability of high quality original products is easier for the average consumer and thus it is the right time for a focused venture like this. There is a good demand for animation content of Indian origin all over the world thanks to the widely spread Indian Diaspora, especially in highly developed markets like United States of America, Canada, Europe, Australia among others.
As platforms evolve, the IP creation process also evolves. Cosmos Maya leads the market in terms of creation of animated content with over 25 and a half hours of broadcast content created per month, which equals to almost one season a month between different shows. This is substantially higher than most of their competitors. Cosmos Maya is more focused on generating brand value through IP creation and since content is now more platform agnostic, it is important to create more consumer touch points.
With a slew of television successes, 5 shows on air, 3 under production getting ready for a launch, rapidly growing global viewers on their YouTube platform and a newly launched dedicated e-commerce merchandising platform, Cosmos-Maya is all set to consolidate its leadership position in the kids’ content space.