COIMBATORE: Lending a hand to budding filmmakers create their own space in the tinsel town, an MBA graduate in Coimbatore has launched an Over-The-Top (OTT) application, exclusively for independent content.
V Arunkanth, an independent filmmaker who developed AK Online, said many OTT platforms, TV and radio channels had rejected his movies, citing lack of star cast and brand value. “They judged my movie without even watching or listening to it fully,” he said.
It’s to surmount this hurdle that Arunkanth launched the mobile application in 2019, airing Live TV and internet radio. Now, he has incorporated the option of OTT in his application. He said that the platform, which was launched on August 15, would basically function on points system.
“It is up to the filmmakers to fix the rate for their movies on my OTT platform. The users must purchase credit points to watch the content. One point costs `1. We just have playback rights, not movie rights,” Arunkanth said, adding that compared to other OTT platforms that pay only a small portion of the subscription fees to the content creator, he pays 80 per cent of the amount to the creator within 48 hours.
As on Tuesday, his platform was being used by 600 patrons, and 650 individual purchases were made. It would not screen movies in the psycho-thriller, horror genres.