The Indian Express & Arré ink pact to produce investigative documentaries

As part of this strategic partnership, the two entities will create video documentaries to be distributed across digital and linear platforms globally

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | August 26, 2015

The Indian Express and Arré, the digital media brand from UDigital, have joined hands to produce investigative documentaries for a world audience.

The Indian Express Group has more than eight decades of legacy and is reputed to be one of the most fearless news organisations in South Asia. UDigital, the company that owns the brand Arré, is the digital media venture promoted by Indian media veterans Ronnie Screwvala, B Saikumar and Ajay Chacko. Arré aims to bring a new idiom of cross-genre and cross-format storytelling to India's burgeoning digital audience of over 300 million Internet consumers and over 700 million mobile consumers.

This collaboration will see a pioneering print media brand come together with a new age digital brand to create a fresh idiom for journalism and documentary film making and storytelling.

Over the decades, The Indian Express and its journalists have offered unbiased, hard-hitting investigative reportage. Arré will bring its creative and video expertise in storytelling across digital multimedia platforms, to explore a range of subjects across the Indian subcontinent.

From human interest to geopolitics, to socio-cultural issues to crime and emerging youth culture, these documentaries will use fact-based reportage to connect with Indian and global audiences interested in seeing impactful stories from India and the sub-continent.

Ronnie Screwvala

Ronnie Screwvala, Co-Founder, UDigital, said, “We are delighted to partner with an institution like The Indian Express Group, which has stood for journalism of courage and we hope to break new frontiers of storytelling for a new generation of Indian and global audiences. This collaboration represents a new generation of partnerships that bring together complementary strengths in the digital era.”

B Saikumar

UDigital's Co-Founder & MD, B Sai Kumar, added here, “Arré is excited and honoured to partner with India's foremost news organisation that has consistently set the bar for journalism. We admire Express' exponential growth over the past few years on the digital medium and we are looking forward to bringing alive, across new media, the path-breaking work done by their team of fearless journalists. The raison d'etre of the partnership is to make documentaries that appeal to the mainstream and resonate with the youth.”

Commenting on the initiative, Anant Goenka, Wholetime Director and Head – New Media, Indian Express said, “Arré is an ambitious and exciting project championed by a visionary leadership that understands the need for high-quality, original content produced in a made-for-digital format. Not digital-first, or digital-friendly, but digital-only. We believe that some of the journalism that we have been doing has the potential to reach an even wider audience. With Arré, there's a meeting of minds in terms of commitment to quality storytelling and the need for a different and disruptive tonality. ?We're excited by the potential of this powerful combination.”

Raj Kamal Jha

“The partnership with Arré adds an exciting new dimension to The Indian Express' investigative and explanatory journalism,” said Raj Kamal Jha, Chief Editor, The Indian Express. “Arré's team has a formidable record of excellence in TV and cinema. Together, we shall work to translate our journalism into the evocative language of a documentary. And ensure that the story always gains in translation.”

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