by Suman Gupta
On completing 2 successful years, BTVI-Business Television India, addressed the media on the overall growth, strategic developments and new digital offerings. On this occasion, Megha Tata, COO, BTVI, Siddharth Zarabi, Executive Editor, BTVI, and Anuj Katiyar, Head of Marketing, Research and Branded Content, BTVI spoke about the current dynamics in the Business News space, importance of good content, the current TG and the overall change in audience’s preferences today.
Megha Tata highlighted the success of the channel in the last two years where the viewership had seen a tenfold growth (from 2-4 % market share to 18-20% market share at present). Talking about new offerings from BTVI, she elucidated on the recently launched digital assets and digital initiatives of BTVI. Reinforcing her belief, she elaborated that the channel has always believed in dedicated and in-depth research that ensures strong content. This focus on content has fuelled the growth of BTVI’s digital footprints with Twitter followers more than doubling since Jan 2017 (140,253 on 1st January 2017 to 3,43,000), she stated.
Talking about the innovations at BTVI, she highlighted the importance of building a strong digital ecosystem around the brand. To illustrate this further, she gave an example of BTVI LIVE stream being available not only on OTT platforms like Hotstar, Jio TV, YUPP TV, Tata Sky and Airtel, but also on trading apps of Kotak Securities, Axis Direct and IIFL Markets which ensures that the channel reaches directly to viewers who are consuming content similar to what BTVI is offering. BTVI has crossed 1.2 million impressions on these OTT platforms in July 2018 and the trend is upward moving.
She also mentioned about the channel ad rates, which has increased by 60%, as compared to last year along with getting first time advertisers on the channel. And other established advertisers replacing other channels to include BTVI in their media plans.
Adding to this, Siddharth Zarabi spoke about the current content and how the essence of the channel has always been to educate the viewers on how to Save, Invest and Prosper. He explained about the viewership patterns, and how BTVI is at pace with the business news channels with its clear and definite content with many of the shows on the channel being genre leaders.
He also spoke about how the Indian economy is transforming from being an unorganized and informal to organized and formal and that BTVI’s coverage has reflected these changes. Talking about wider audience needs – From college student studying economics to equity investor – he mentioned how BTVI has constantly innovated to adapt to the needs of its viewers over their lifecycle. Talking about BTVI’s newly launched Podcast and WhatsApp service, he elaborated on how the channel plans to engage deeply with the audiences across all platforms and at all times.
Speaking on the marketing front, Anuj Katiyar spoke about the channel’s credo to empower audiences to make the right financial decisions. He elaborated on how BTVI’s continued growth amongst the English Business News genre is eating into the share of the established players in the market.
He highlighted the strategy of channel was to drive eyeballs through innovative and focussed marketing for the targeted audiences, rather than pushing out a lot of money through mindless mass media marketing. This had already shown phenomenal results in the viewership.
Source for all viewership related data is BARC India|Market:6Metros+Guj1mn+|TG:22+MalesAB
About BTVI :BTVI is a fast-growing multi-platform news channel that provides best in class business news coupled with highly proficient and engaging content for dedicated financial and business news audiences across India. BTVI is available on all leading DTH and cable TV platforms and reaches millions of English speaking viewers across the country. The channel livestream is available on http://www.btvi.in/livetv. You can follow us on Twitter @BTVI and catch our content on our Facebook page BTVILive.
