The Moody Nation (TMN) generates new-age branded content in the form of videos and short films. TMN has worked with brands like OYO Rooms, Roposo, Paytm and Urban Ladder and has collaborated with artists like Manoj Bajpayee, Raveena Tandon, Sonu Nigam, Piyush Mishra and Shaan to name a few.
Each of their videos has garnered over a million views on Youtube.
In an Exclusive Interaction with Sujata Sangwan of BWDisrupt, Anshul Sushil, Co-Founder, The Moody Nation, Shares His Entrepreneurial Journey and Details About His Venture.
How did the entrepreneurial bug bite you?I had the privilege of working with 150 companies when I was heading BoringBrands, and last year we had a very interesting time when we worked with brands like OYO Rooms, Paytm, and Urban Ladder. At that point of time I realized how interesting original content could be in the realm of new-age marketing; and we decided to build something from scratch—and hence the birth of The Moody Nation. This company was germinated to solve problems of creating engagement for brands digitally, using entertainment as a primary tool.
When was your startup founded and who are the co-founders?I started The Moody Nation along with my friend Vinay Jaiswal in 2015. We decided to marry Vinay’s creativity and filmmaking skills with my digital and marketing expertise to build a one-of-its kind content creation company.
What is your Product or Service / Offerings to Customer? The Moody Nation is here to fulfil a very futuristic need of creating great content online for engaging consumers for a brand. Historically if we see, consumers have always loved a brand that narrates amazing stories, and digital world gives us the opportunity to tell beautiful stories that could really excite and engage consumers; and that’s what we aim to do at The Moody Nation. We will be creating original content that could be singles, web-series, feature films for the digital space and much more. The content we create will be crafted keeping the modern youth in mind, and brands would love to be part of such content because content like these will go a long way in establishing emotional connect with the consumer.
For instance, we made a very powerful short film, Jai Hind for OYO Rooms; through this digital content OYO Rooms paid tribute to independent India. The original content gave OYO Rooms a first of its kind mass appeal and the messaging resonated with Indians across the world.
What were the challenges your startup faced while setting up the business?The most important concern is that I really do not want to cut corners with quality while working with any brand. Consumers have changed their outlook—they have started opting for newer platforms; internet is being consumed more than ever. However, amidst all this drastic paradigm shift, many brands have lagged behind in terms of keeping pace with changing market trends. Some brands still don’t understand how these patterns are shifting; for instance, they could never imagine someone in a tier 4 city consuming internet, using YouTube by purchasing a Rs100 pack. This shift in pattern is where The Moody Nation is bringing brands forward and helping them create original content for the upbeat consumer.
Globally if you look at the kind of work happening in sponsorship with brands like JW Marriot’s Two Bellmen, or Volvo’s series of original live tests- they are just phenomenal pieces of content; whereas in India we have still not seen such ambitious projects.
Who are your competitors?Right now my initiative hardly has any competition because this is a pioneering stage. Having said that, anybody who is working to enthuse a consumer using digital platform would be our competitor.
How is your business model different from the existing ones?I feel, right now it’s a blue-ocean time for digital businesses; some people are establishing platforms like Voot, Netflix, etc. and then when I dig deep, I realize there is a dearth of people who want to create amazing content. I want to create outstanding content for digital platforms and I want The Moody Nation to become India’s number 1 digital entertainment company. My company will create songs, films, web-episodes, and full-fledged feature films for digital consumption.
Who are your clients? How do you look at expanding?Some of my clients have been OYO Rooms, Paytm, Roposo, Urban Ladder, and I think the way we are looking to expand is by doing bigger projects. In the past few months, serious brands (top 10 in the country) have started showing interest in our work. Having said that, I think, gradually the shift is happening—earlier a brand manager would look at spending a bit of money from the digital marketing budget, but now bigger brands are looking at allocating a certain portion of the advertising budget for digital content. I think that’s how we are looking at expanding, working with brands who can really create brand-love by working for consumers, and by partnering with us.
What are the traction details?So far we have created 5 pieces of original content and the revenue we have generated from these are far much more than anybody else in the original content space in a year. I think all of our videos have garnered more than 2 million views so far, and that’s what makes us different. The other thing that is very interesting is the kind of brands talking to us, and these are no longer brands who are looking for just 1 or 2 videos to be done—they are looking for series over a period of 2 to 6 months or even a year; this is the new digital expansion strategy for all brands.
What is the funding status and how do you monetize?Not every startup requires funding from day 1. Most of us can have a scalable model, which has gained some revenue over time and we are definitely at a point where we are in advanced talks with potential investors to further us in our ambitions.
What is the market size and market opportunity?The Indian media & entertainment sector is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13.9 per cent year-on-year to reach Rs 196,400 crore ($28.82 billion) by 2019. With improving bandwidth and an influx of cheaper smartphones, the potential audience base for original digital content is growing at an unprecedented rate. Apart from the technology aspect, the average viewer is also becoming smarter and having been exposed to international content is looking for good storytelling that hits closer to home. That online content is freely available and accessible on the go make it even more popular.
