As far as I know, this is the second purely online show out of India. The first one I remember is called Company Bahadur.

It follows the story of a young girl called Neeti who I am guessing chronicles her daily life in the form of a video. The show is aimed at young junta on the internet and hence the theme fits perfectly. Ms. Neeti talks about naughty professors, ooohhs and aaahs at the right times and gushes over the cute boy next door. It currently is being published and promoted on 4 platforms:

That’s not a bad number, considering that it was launched just a week ago. The show will have 2 episodes per week. And I am guessing there would hardly be any production costs. A fresh actress, minor shooting costs and very measly content publishing costs (my personal guess max. 2 lakhs INR per month). I have no clue who they might be earning money right now, apart from some ads on the Midday portal, being served Vdopia ad network.

Personally, the script sucks. But I am assuming it will click with every sex-starved teenager out there (at least that’s what I can see from the user comments). Overall, it has snappy and fresh content. And it makes perfect use of our deeply ingrained social need of peeking into others personal life. But I am still not very sure about how far can they take this. I mean after a web-series gains popularity and has enough audience they can make via

  • Ads on the page like Google ads / banner ads etc.
  • In video ads to promote products. Same as any TV commercial
  • Video advertising e.g. that you see in YouTube (India has a good player in this field, Vdopia)
  • Acquisition by a TV network

The first three can never cover the costs of a professionally made video series. And the fourth looks feasible in some freak scenario if Niti manages to somehow become India’s very own meme. I did some research and there a few web series that have been able to pull off TV deals (mostly the result of hard work by struggling artists while sitting in their garages with a camcorder):

  1. Quarterlife was acquired by NBC but was a huge flop. It was the first of its kind.
  2. Pure Pwnage recently granned a deal with some Canadian TV (who cares right? It’s Canada after all!)
  3. The Guild was picked up by Microsoft MSN Video
  4. Washington Post itself launched a comedy series based on tweets by celebrities! Psst… it;s called Twits ;)

For more cooler stuff, check out some of the most famous web series of our current times: