Juggernaut Productions ties up with Merry Go Round Studios for OTT content

Juggernaut Productions, the production house owned by IN10 Media Network, has partnered with Umesh Shukla and Ashish Wagh’s Merry Go Round Studios to co-produce content for OTT platforms.

Shukla is known for films such as Oh My God and Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor-starrer 102 Not Out. Juggernaut Productions has backed shows such as Shoorveer, Code M (seasons one and two), The Married Woman, Avrodh and others. The two companies will co-develop a series based on the Gujarati play, Ek Room Rasodu directed by Shukla.

“Juggernaut Productions is happy to co-create content with Merry Go Round and work with a talented filmmaker like Umesh Shukla. This partnership will further expand our horizon of storytelling with varied themes that resonate with audiences across the country,” Samar Khan, chief executive officer, Juggernaut Productions (OTT) said in a statement.

Video streaming services were expected to have spent around ₹1,920 crore to create original content for India in 2021, a 17% rise over ₹1,400 crore spent in 2019. This comes after the services had seen a sharp rise in audiences during the 2020 lockdown.

The platforms will increase spends including on sports to ₹30,000 crore during 2021-25, according to the latest Ficci-EY media and entertainment industry report. The investment in original content makes sense given that viewers are learning to pay for the content they consume.

In 2020, 29 million subscribers paid for 53 million OTT video subscriptions (not counting subscriptions bundled along with data plans), a figure that is estimated to have risen to 39 million subscribers for 71 million subscriptions in 2021.

Surging viewership of streaming platforms during the two years of the pandemic has helped double the income of actors playing big roles in web shows and take up the wage bills to 50% of production costs at streaming services from less than 10% pre-pandemic, industry experts said.