The Story of a Startup

It all began one morning in 2020. I got a call from an excited Avinash Mudaliar. "Machaan, would you want to consult for a product I’m going to build? It’s a new-age Tinder, da." Being a diehard bachelor, I perked up. "I like the idea, da. More importantly, I just want to work with you, machaan."

For those who don’t know, Avinash is a man of giga accomplishments. Apart from being a kickass quizzer and a superlative writer, he is the inventor of Saregama Carvaan. He also happens to be the co-creator of Gaana.com.

Although I don’t consult much, I loved the idea of an app-building adventure with Avinash. I immediately hitched my wagon to his engine. That’s when he quietly disclosed that he was collaborating with Hindustan Times to float a startup called HT Labs. The Tinder idea was his clickbait. He had bigger aces up his sleeve.

Ace No. 1 was a brainchild he rustled up in a year. It was a personal recommendation engine for OTT watchers, originally meant to compete with JustWatch, the definitive streaming guide internationally. He initially named it OTTwatch. I was a daily witness to how the app was built. He handpicked his team of product managers. Techies and designers blindly followed him because of his reputation for doing cool things. Zafar Sawant, his co-conspirator at Network18, was put in charge of building OTTwatch. Over a hundred Zoom calls, I witnessed the creation of a magical app that could recommend ‘what to watch’ way better than Netflix or Prime Video. Just before launch, some premonition struck Avi, and he changed the name to OTTplay. Thus, a new star was born on the OTT horizon in 2021.

Designed with love by Rajat and his dreamers, marketed with passion by Amit Gupta and his loyal band of doers, and blessed by the belief of leaders like Praveen Someshwar, Avinash’s brainchild, OTTplay, has morphed into India’s largest OTT aggregator. In a matter of just 3 years, OTTplay has become India ka Super OTT App by serving 38 OTTs and 300+ live channels. Industry titans like Tata Play Binge have been outsmarted and outwitted by deft moves worthy of chronicling in a case study. We’ll leave that for another day.

For now, I’d like to bring your attention to something remarkable we did as a team yesterday. At the Jio World Convention Center, without much ado, OTTplay pulled off the biggest coup in OTT aggregation. JioCinema, the big daddy of OTTs in India, decided to join the OTTplay fold. They chose OTTplay over Tata Play Binge, Airtel Xstream Play, Watcho, PlayboxTV, and YuppTV. With this new feather in our cap, OTTplay now has the widest catalog of films and web series in India, in any language!

You won’t believe it if I told you that many employees of HT Labs have never met each other in real life. Yesterday was possibly the second time I’ve met my fellow colleagues at OTTplay in the last 4 years. Imagine building India’s largest OTT aggregator with a hundred-plus remote workers. That’s the awesome startup Avinash Mudaliar has built.

I know, in the bottom of my heart, that OTTplay will become a unicorn someday soon. It deserves to be, with the many innovations being rolled out daily. Here’s a sample of the awesome sauce we’re dishing out – Just last week, OTTplay became the only entertainment app for the MG Windsor, the game-changing Electric Vehicle. There are a lot more surprises in the days to come.

For now, we’re all chuffed with JioCinema joining the OTTplay fold. Show us some love. Subscribe to an OTTplay pack, no? It’s perhaps the best way to mazey karo multiply.

To subscribe visit https://www.ottplay.com/plans