Asian investment companyEmerald Media is spending US$50 million on YuppTV, givingthe OTT platform the fuel to drive original programming up to between 20% and 30% of total content over the next two to three years and to fast-track global subscription ambitions.

For its money, the pan-Asian investment platform gets a “significant minority” stake in YuppTV, based in the U.S. with management and engineering teams in Hyderabad.

The investment is Emerald Media's largest in an OTT platform, although the size of the stake has not been disclosed.

Kamat calls YuppTV an "anchor to our vision of building a new age media company".

Speaking shortly after the announcement today, Kamat said Emerald Media "believes in driving change and value-creation by providing a distinctive combination of capital, domain knowledge and management bandwidth".

YuppTV founder and chief executive, Uday Reddy, said he hoped to leverage Emerald Media's global relationships with, among others, Endemol India and Fluence, "to create original programming and make this platform a next generation distribution and content powerhouse".

Local originals have already been commissioned; announcements are expected within two months.

YuppTV's focus will continue to be on South Asian content, which targets a sector with a potential global audience of between 30 million and 40 million "Diaspora" Indians.

Kamat says a high percentage of them are already paying significant amounts to various platforms to access Indian and South Asian content. Currently, average ARPU in the U.S. is about $20, averaging out across a blend of markets at about US$15.

The aim is to consolidate Diaspora audiences on YuppTV, maintaining the freemium model and growing the subscription base.

Expansion plans include growing the platform in India, a highly competitive market with low ARPUs.

YuppTV offers content in 14 languages live and on-demand in various formats. Other stats from today's announcement: 400 million households around the world, more than five million monthly visitors, access across 27 integrated devices, peak monthly traffic of 20 million, offers 250+ South Asian TV channels, 5,000 moves and more than 100 TV shows. Claims to be adding almost 5,000 hours of new on-demand content every day.

11 October 2016