A decade between Kolkata and Dhaka!

(From left) Anirban Chakrabarti as the Bengali detective character Eken Babu

The numbers speak for themselves, as Vishnu Kant Mohta, co-founder of the OTT platform, Hoichoi, spells it out to me: "There are 90 million Bengali speakers in West Bengal. And 180 million in Bangladesh, with a global Bengali diaspora much vaster than West Bengal's. The HQ of Hoichoi should then be in Dhaka, not Kolkata!"

That hasn't happened yet, what with "Bangladesh still behind on the digital distribution curve, without Jio and UPI for tailwinds. But it'll happen, maybe 10 years later? That's how I wanna get my organisation to think," Mohta says.

Literally, Hoichoi is a Bengali onomatopoeic word for a loud uproar/noise. It's the one-stop app for all things Bengali entertainment (films/series).

Recently, Mohta got invited by IIM, Ahmedabad, with Hoichoi inducted as a case-study, where he spoke of being a man of numbers in a world of visuals/words.

Vishnu Kant Mohta, co-founder of Hoichoi

I was in Kolkata for Hoichoi's snazzy, starry 10th year anniversary - with a banger of a trailer after another, for its content slate - and I could see what the hullabaloo over 200 web series, with a billion hours of watched-content, in 100-plus countries, is about.

And why a Bengali streaming service was the answer to global majors that nobody gave, when it mattered.

Consider the content economy, as I saw it from Mumbai, in 2016. It's when the e-commerce giant (Amazon Prime Video), former video-rental library (Netflix), and a TV broadcaster (Hotstar), launched OTT platforms in India.

What was the local movie industry's response to this thoroughly disruptive new medium? Radio silence. Sure, the major production houses in Mumbai, the likes of Yash Raj Films, Dharma, etc, do have a digital arm. But it's mainly to serve as vendors for the said OTTs.

Back in Kolkata, Mohta and his brothers at the popular film studio, Shree Venkatesh Films (SVF), producing Bengali movies since the late 1990s, and content for television channels, circa 2008 onwards, were on the drawing board, attempting to solve an altogether another commercial puzzle.

Which is? That as producers, you're in the "B2B business, dealing with distributors, producers, broadcasters… You never [directly] own a rupee of the customer's wallet." How did they intend to change that?

Going two seemingly opposite directions. One, analogue, i.e. brick-and-mortar - opening "mini-plexes" in every district of West Bengal.

Two, the OTT. As Mohta, who led this digital division, puts it, "The Internet business is about owning the wallet - what else is BookMyShow, Uber, Zomato, Swiggy…" Straight off, Hoichoi began with annual subscriptions; a huge punt, already.

That, as a film company, SVF had cracked television production, which is rare, even in the reverse, made owning an OTT a natural step; but in hindsight, of course.

Speaking to Mohta, I can tell, he's a Steve Jobs fan - not just for the portrait in his cabin that I notice, over a Zoom call, but that he regularly refers to Jobs, talking about how "adversity creates opportunity, everything happens for a reason," and that you can always connect dots of your own story, only in retrospect.

Mohta's family firm, SVF, started out as film distributors - Mani Ratnam's Bombay (1995) being their first big success. But they branched out to production, "because you can't own your destiny as distributors." Likewise, with forays into other allied fields, including OTT. Which, evidently, equals content production at ginormous rate plus scale.

Mohta calls web series as "something with the quality of film, but the discipline of television." Hyderabad's top producer, Allu Aravind, had once told me about how Hoichoi had basically set up his Telugu OTT app, Aha.

Mohta's point: "It would take [global/national] OTTs a long time to devise a regional content strategy." It took him three months to execute Aha. He holds a stake in it.

But he's clear about Bengal being his core business: "We don't want to be everything to everyone, but everything to someone. I always say, [for us] it's Bangladesh, not Bandra." That's his look-east policy.

In 2019, Mohta set up an office in Dhaka. I only learnt from him that Indian films aren't allowed to theatrically release in Bangladesh - not because of a law, but local lobbies.

Hoichoi Studio's Bonolota Express (2026) is the year's hugest blockbuster in Bangladesh, and among the top three box-office successes of all time.

Kolkata, of course, has its own movie industry. As per Mohta, it went through a near terminal decline post the 1970s, and that "SVF was lucky and instrumental in reviving it."

SVF stars don't work for Hoichoi. Economics don't add up. Focus is on stories, instead. But Hoichoi content does release in theatres. Basis, the data the app is privy to. This is unique for any Indian production house.

Take the detective, Eken Babu. Mohta says, "The actor (Anirban Chakrabarti) was unknown before this role, and he doesn't look like a [conventional] star either."

Eken Babu has had a nine-season run on Hoichoi, with multiple films as hits in theatres, as a result. The fourth film, The Eken: Kerala-e Kurukshetra, is Bengal's biggest Durga Puja release of 2026. Shubho Sharadiya at the cinemas too then!

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14

Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper