In the age of technology advancement, visual entertainment content is getting popular amongst today’s kids. To keep the kids hooked, there is a constant need for good educational yet entertaining content, which aslo keeps them excited and curious.
With a dearth of age appropriate, culturally relevant content for kids under six years in India, Ontamo Entertainment grabbed the opportunity of having an edutainment startup. Incepted in early 2019 by founders Prasant Pinge, Sandeep Pinge and Yuvraj Magar, the startup created Ria Rabbit! Magar takes care of the production, Sandeep handles the marketing and administration, and Prashant manages the strategy and content writing.
The inspiration behind Ria Rabbit was to create an intellectual property, especially with regards to original content in English and regional languages, with a strong Indian ethos that is fun, engaging and safe for children in the age group of zero to six years.
“Since this age group is especially impressionable, we wanted to create a universe that not only appeals to infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers but also gains the trust and confidence of their parents,” said Ontamo Entertainment co-founder and CEO Prashant Pinge.
“The Ria Rabbit universe has been specially developed for children to enjoy while reflecting traditional Indian values within a modern world,” Pinge added.
The team wanted their main character to have strong emotional connect with children. Chucking out the obvious choices of cats and dogs, they decided to make rabbit their primary character. “Rabbits are cute, cuddly and docile, we felt that they perfectly embodied all the values that we wanted our primary characters to possess and would be easily accepted by our target audience,” mentioned Pinge.
The idea of Ria Rabbit was conceived in November 2018 with the production beginning in February 2019. The intellectual property was launched on YouTube on 23 April, 2019 and the first book was launched on Amazon on 3 May, 2019. Since then, the YouTube channel has steadily grown to over 70 videos with new and exciting videos being added every week, and currently has more than 15 books on Amazon. Ria Rabbit also has a vibrant presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
An MBA graduate from the Indian School of Business, Pinge has worked in strategy, marketing and business development. His entrepreneurial journey has been evolutionary, commencing with Media Panther, an integrated marketing agency, in 2011. He then moved onto Reptile FX, an animation studio, in 2012, before culminating in his current role at Ontamo Entertainment in 2019.
Pinge is also an acclaimed author of children’s fiction. His books have been shortlisted for the prestigious Crossword Book Award in the children’s writing (jury) category.
The company has a formal marketing route charted out to create awareness about Ria Rabbit, they are also confident that word-of-mouth publicity will drive the property’s popularity across India. Ria Rabbit has a multi- revenue model with a B2C component where it will engage with parents through transactions and subscriptions and a B2B component where it will engage with brands through advertisements and royalties.
“The quality of the content and especially our focus on creating original content across various formats will serve as a strong marketing driver,” feels Pinge.
Parents are happy that Ria Rabbit comes in all formats from videos to audio stories and books, which helps their children develop different skills while continuing to enjoy their interaction with the same universe.
