Alok Nair, Mini Menon coming up with infotainment content platform 'Indy Network'

Mini Menon and Alok Nair team up with Akshay Chavan to create a digital platform to provide multimedia content, targeting the age group of 15-45 years. It will go live in a few months

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | August 11, 2016

(L-R) Alok Nair, Mini Menon and Akshay Chavan

Mini Menon and Alok Nair have been part of the evolution of Indian news channels over two decades. After working together in their previous channel Bloomberg TV India, they have jointly ventured to create an infotainment content provider platform Indy Network. The platform is expected to create and deliver original innovative, multimedia content, targeting the age group of 15-45 years. They have partnered with Akshay Chavan, a domain expert to bring his expertise to the venture.

The platform will go live in a few months and will provide all type of multimedia content, including text, videos and images. Going forward, the website might even make programmes for the television space, but the core of the platform will remain digital content.

Mini Menon will drive the content and vision for Indy Network as the Co-Founder and Editor. During her career as a journalist, Mini has been credited with creating some of the most compelling news and long format programmes that have set benchmarks in the industry.

Menon said, “With technology providing multiple touch points and a clearer audience segmentation, Indy Network is based on the belief that the Indian audience, especially the youth, is being underserved and there are big and crucial content gaps that need to be filled. We aim to close this gap by offering clear focused content. It is time to break through the clutter and bring together the finest minds and create the best in class content.”

On the launch, Nair, who is also the CEO and Co-Founder of the company, commented, “It is time to bring in a fresh set of entrepreneurs in the infotainment business. Pranoy Roy, Raghav Bahl and Ronnie Screwvala all started in the 1980s-'90s and have been inspirational for what they have created. Indian media is ready for a new generation of passionate entrepreneurs creating independent unbiased content. We are excited with the tremendous opportunity that digital offers and are hoping to create innovative content platforms with strategic partners catering to a diverse audience set across niches. We believe the infotainment space will see a huge growth in the next few years and Indy Network shall be a key contributor. The spirit of our enterprise is collaboration. We look forward to this exciting new journey.”

Akshay Chavan, as co-founder and Head of Research, brings with him a decade-long experience of intensive research in niche content, as well as a profound understanding of digital media platforms. He said, “With increasing penetration of social media and technology, India is experiencing a dramatic change in the way content is being consumed and shared. These are indeed interesting times to be in.”

On venturing into the digital space, Menon said, “We wanted to step on a wider platform than just being limited by FPC or a satellite and digital was the next frontier where possibly I could have worked on.”

Commenting on his venture into the digital space, Nair said, “We have been part of the evolving medium of television and was fortunate to learn and write the curve of it. As professional individuals, we need to evolve and the digital front and technology are the future. The sooner we embrace it, the better it is. Our past experience will help us and create it on the digital platform and help us reach far and wide.”

Currently, the website is funded by the three co-founders and will look at monetisation once it goes live. Talking about the monetisation model, Nair said, “There are as many models available, like advertising model and co-branding model. I think we will look at both these models once our platform is up and will do a lot of collaborations in terms of strategic content. Currently, we are in a bootstrapping phase and not in a hurry. It's not about raising capital and returns, but about creating a long-term value and building a business which is sustainable in the long run and profitable. We will look at capital raising only in the long-term.”

Elaborating on the marketing strategy, Nair said, “The marketing strategy is going to be phase wise. First, you will see a lot of Indy Network's collaborations, partnerships and products roll out. When in few months' time, once we are ready with our own platform, you will see a lot of targeted marketing on the digital front and the traditional mediums. Mostly we will focus on the digital front, though.”

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