Exclusive! Founder of India's first OTT platform for wildlife, Suyash Keshari talks about virtual safari experiences and more!

Suyash Keshari, a young award-winning environment and wildlife presenter, filmmaker, and conservationist, has recently launched India's first OTT platform, exclusively for wildlife. The wildlife enthusiast offers virtual safari experiences through his platform, Safari with Suyash-TV , along with several other contents on wildlife.

Season one of the virtual safari experience in Bandhavgarh was out last year and has been receiving a great response. In an exclusive interview with OTTplay, Keshari talks about the OTT platform, virtual safari experiences, wildlife conservation and more. Excerpts:

You have started India's first OTT platform exclusively for wildlife. Could you tell us a bit about it? How did you get the idea and about your journey so far?

I had this idea for the past three years to do virtual Safaris in India. I wanted to deliver an experience of the safari to people's homes all across the world, especially because I think that not everyone has the time, resources, or energy or even the finances to travel. Taking a safari holiday is actually very expensive and time-consuming. And it's not possible for everyone to do that. But I want people to still have a way to connect with the wild. It's easy sometimes to connect with nature because you can go into the park. But if you go into your local park, you might not see wildlife, depending on where you live. There's a huge gap between people and wildlife. I want to bridge that gap. I want to bring people closer to nature and what better than taking them on a safari to one of the most biodiverse spaces in the world. That's how this idea of the virtual Safari came up. And then we were wondering where should we do it, if we should give it to a third party or put it on YouTube. And that's where over time, I was like, why don't we host it on our own platform. So my team and I put in blood, sweat and tears to get this platform together so that we can give a budget experience to people. And now it gives access to people from all across the world to the content, where literally, they feel like they're sitting behind me on a Jeep as I'm driving to spot different animals, tracking them, and showing them the beautiful wildlife.

What has the response for Season 1 been like?

I think the response has been phenomenal. People who have watched it, have absolutely loved it. When we were pitching it as a virtual Safari, we were at the tail end of the second wave. And people were just so sick and tired of everything being virtual. They were like, not another Zoom meeting and not another virtual event. We did have a challenge with that. But this does not actually replace a physical experience. It's like what you watch on TV but more immersive. It is educational and adventurous. It's helping you connect with nature and giving you an alternative to travelling right now. So, in the beginning, we had that problem. But then slowly as people watched it, they said they didn't expect it to be so fun and asked how could we replicate the actual experience in the wild for them at home. The only different thing is that they miss the wind, the bumps of the vehicle. Everything else is the same, including the thrill of spotting a tiger because it's unfolding in real-time. It's not like documentaries, it's only the action that you see here, we actually track, we find pugmarks, we hear alarm calls, we hear the growling of the tiger, we wait, then the tiger comes out. And I'm always like Tiger, Tiger, Tiger... I think that really helps people. And it really does have a great impact, especially for younger kids, who are aspiring to be someone like me or kids who want to be more connected to the wild or even parents who enjoy the wild but are not unable to go, leaving their kids behind. I think it really created a big impact.

Season One focuses on the species of Tigers of Bandhavgarh. Why did you decide to have tigers for season one of the series?

Bandhavgarh is like home for me. I have worked there for over a decade. I know the people like the family, I know the tigers like they're my family. I know every single place there. I know the landscape very well. I've tracked some tigers since they were three, four months old till they were 10 to 11 years old. It's a very biodiverse spot. It has over 250 species of birds and over 35 species of mammals, and a lot of different insects. The landscape is beautiful and that really adds to the whole visual experience. Why choose tigers? Tigers are the hallmark species. We show the beauty of tigers, the charisma of tigers, and also the humanity in tigers, a mother nursing her cubs, a mother trying to hunt for her cubs and a male tiger marking his territory. That's like building a house of his own. I think if I can do that, then I can really tell people that if you can save these tigers, these birds, we can save our soil and the entire ecosystem. Nothing catches people's eye like a tiger. It's a world-renowned species. If you tell people, let's study about frogs or insects, 99% of them will not be interested. But if I can get even nine people interested in a tiger, I can help save the species, the frogs, the bees, the birds and insects. They come under the umbrella species of tiger. So it's just a strategy to save everything in the name of tigers.

In one of your episodes, I remember you saying that filming is just 10% of the entire Safari. Yes. And it was just waiting and waiting and waiting. Yeah. So how much waiting did it take to come out with season one of the series?

Our experiences were happening in real-time. So we did not spend what a typical documentary filmmaker would spend, that is a year or six months or seven months. For five episodes of our experiences, we just spent five days filming. It's literally us entering the park and whatever you see till the end is the safari. Of course, creating the platform, marketing the platform, creating the trailer and creating the other content took about six months to generate properly.

So what were the challenges that you face while creating the virtual experiences?

I think the biggest challenge that we faced was really thinking about whether a product like this will be successful or not. Second, what we faced is how to keep the audience engaged. I had to be talking constantly on the mic. We try to provide a plethora of information like a dictionary or encyclopedia for everyone to keep the audience engaged including the condition of the soil, the weather etc. It is very difficult to do as you can't get very technical. You have to be precise, concise and deliver in a fun and educational manner. So I think that was a challenge. Of course, other challenges were that it's fully self-funded and self-executed. So even though five episodes or five experiences took just five days, we had to do a lot of testing to do before a month and a half. We had to spend a lot more time, money and effort in making the platform as well. So, there were a lot of challenges involved in that too.

Could you also tell us a bit about your WWE series? There are five episodes, each under 15 minutes. How did you conceptualise the series?

There are two ends of the spectrum since they are completely different experiences. The virtual safari experience is approximately two hours long. There's no drama, no hallmark of what traditional documentary would have in that. Because it's not a documentary, it's an experience. Whereas what I created, which is Season One of safari with WWF International, has a lot of drama in action, there're beats, suspense built for what's going to happen next with a lot of really cool sound effects. The idea was still at that time, also, to take people on a virtual safari experience. The idea was to still give people especially the younger generations, people of my age, who might not care enough about the world, something that they can watch within 10 to 15 minutes. And deliver a message of conservation. That's what the idea was. This was completely self-produced and self-financed. And then, WWF came over and took it forward for the global web release. It was my first documentary series, and I'm still very proud of it.

You said self-financed. So how are you managing to fund the series?

It comes from my own finances. Whatever we get from filming, we invest back in filming. I do a lot of safari tours as well. We sell footage, so all of that is invested back into filming and making documentaries.

As a wildlife conservationist and presenter, what do you think needs to be done to conserve the wildlife from both people and the government?

I think India must move in a direction where we start to connect all our national parks and reserves because they are becoming fragmented. And everything is surrounded by farmland or human habitation, which leads to a decrease in the gene pool of the animals, which would lead to inbreeding. This will further lead to problems as the gene pool gets weak, tigers and other animals will also become weaker, and start disappearing. So it's imperative that we connect national parks and we increase the area because a lot of these parks are actually getting overcrowded with animals. There is no space. Along with this, we must educate every single person in India about wildlife and conservation. In schools, we don't teach about wildlife and conservation enough. Why is it that every individual, even educated people think that a tiger in the wild is going to attack them? People do not know the difference between different species. All of these things are important because they are our natural heritage. People need to know the importance that national parks and resorts play. They need to know if a certain patch of land that looks forested can actually support wildlife. If you clear 10,000 trees and in return, you plant 20,000 trees, it's actually not going to be better because you're never going to be able to replicate those 10,000 trees, which are naturally grown and every single plant that goes alongside it. So all of that only can come through educating people in the right manner, so that they can make better decisions to save our future.