With premium snackable content, Rusk Media is a Gen Z-first mobile entertainment company. Since its inception in 2019, the company has witnessed remarkable growth, amassing a massive viewership of 20 million. Catering primarily to Hindi-speaking North Indians aged 15 to 30 years, Rusk Studio has produced many entertaining and memorable IPs for various OTT platforms. Shows like Playground, Roomies, Dude, Couple Goals, and Date with Senior have grabbed the attention of the Gen Z audience base.
MI talks with Ajit Manerikar, Senior Vice President of production & Commercials at Rusk Media in a one-on-one interaction. Ajit, a passionate content creator and seasoned production management executive, brings expertise from renowned organizations such as Disney, Fremantle Media, Endemol, Discovery, and YouTube. As Ajit completes his two-year tenure at Rusk Media this May, he shares insights into Gen Z behaviors, the research process, and the future of content creation.
Edited excerpts here:
Q) Tell us about Rusk’s mobile-first content creation approach as a company. Share some insights into the behavioural patterns of Gen Z audiences.
Ajit: Earlier, the content available over multiple platforms was catering to the female and male community of the age group 30-35 years around themes like crime, thrillers, romance, etc. Rusk Media recognized the gap in the distribution pallet. Hence, in 2019 it was established with the intent to distribute content to the age group 14-24 years old. Rusk Media realized the issues that revolve around this age group like schools, early romance, getting into college, internship, or job. Therefore, the Rusk Studio indulged in making content to the liking of Gen Zs. Shows like School Chale Hum, School Friends, and Date with Senior were created that quickly held with their audience.
Also read: Rusk Studios In Collaboration With Fyp Presents “Tuition Ke Baad” A Light-Hearted Teen Romcom
Initially, we were catering to the YouTube audience. We evolved and associated with many other platforms. During the pandemic, we learned people consumed mobile content for their core entertainment because of the whole isolation process they were going through. Gradually, it increased the individual mobile usage. Even now, you can hardly see a family sitting together and watching TV.
A lot of OTT platforms started licensing our content. Most of our content like Roomies in Dreamland, Couple Goals, School Friends, and more were picked up for new seasons on other platforms. So the first season for these shows is still on YouTube while all other seasons are available on different OTT platforms.
We learned that content on mobile devices is much different from others. For TV, there must be a particular time and place while watching content whereas people can carry mobile devices anytime anywhere. With TV, there is a process, you keep mobiles aside while watching and enjoy the shows together. However, on mobile devices, you might receive a call, notification, and other updates constantly. As per our research, Gen Zs have a shorter attention span of time, they tend to switch content after a notification on their mobile device. So we decided to create snackable mobile-first content. We started to make shorter content for about 10-12 min with good and gripping storytelling so that people wish to come back to the show even after the distraction.
The shooting and editing are also far different from that of television. When we shoot for mobile, there is not much scope to capture surroundings and background, because people want to get the actual content. We do the shooting and editing in a fast manner, with no time for too many expressions because of the audience’s shorter attention time. Every shot is captured very closely with good lighting to hook the audience and give them a good viewing experience.
Q) Rusk Media is working towards the paradigm shift towards mobile content consumption. Are you still making content for TV?
Ajit: At Rusk Media, we create different IPs and sell them to various platforms to make white-label content. We also have a gaming platform, where these IPs are made as a part of the game. Apart from this, we have a service segment where we cater to commission shows. We are working with Jio for another commission show. Being a mobile-first production house is our strength but we also look forward to cater television and OTTs. We are not limiting ourselves to mobile only.
We are pitching daily soaps too, because we strongly believe serial content is a way forward. People will only engage with the show if they find it interesting. It also adds to the business revenue for the long 8 or 10 episodes people get hooked to.
Q) How elaborate does the research go during content creation?
Ajit: Currently, we are available on 4 platforms, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. We receive approximately 20 million viewers across all these platforms. This helps us gather a huge data we get primarily from the platforms. Data like who’s watching our shows, and what themes and genres young people like. Secondly, we follow industry insights and global trends to understand what people prefer across the globe.
Q) What kind of content does Rusk Media plan to deliver to the regional audiences?
Ajit: As of now, we don’t have anything for regional audiences. However, we are collaborating with a lot of platforms to create regional content. Presently, we are creating content for the Hindi-speaking Gen Zs. With the help of our data, we realized the wants and needs of Gen Zs and Alpha are common across the country. We are trying to license our content to these regional television channels. Hopefully, around the third quarter, we will announce something for the regional space.
In the space of a gaming entertainment show, we just finalized the shooting of Playground Season 3. We are engaging with some global partners like Latin and European countries for licensing.
Q) What is the role of emerging technology and AI in content creation? Where do you see the future of content creation
Ajit: Presently, we’re not using AI to create content. There are platforms able to create videos as per your command. It’s scary to me considering people could lose their jobs. However, there are some tasks that AI seems to do quite easily ultimately saving the huge amount of money that the related software costs. I don’t think AI can fall into the area of production where we shoot video with LED screen lights. It can’t get into the making of micro dramas of 1 to 2 mins.
Content creation is a serialized package. Going forward, the good snackable short video formats will become crucial. These formats can create a mind space where people know they can leave the platform after 2 minutes. Having said that, long video formats will also be present along with movies.
Also read: Tuition Ke Baad: A Beautiful Tale of Friends
Q) Tell us about the projects in the pipeline and future plans.
Ajit: We have School Friends Season 4, Couple Goals Season 3, and Playground Season 4 in the pipeline. We are working towards the licensing of the new seasons. We have another show lined up on Jio. We have our focus on creating new IPs. Hopefully, we will come up with 10-15 IPs by this year relevant to the needs of Gen Zs. We also ventured into diverse kinds of mythology. We believe, there are many mythological stories yet to be told other than Ramayana and Mahabharata. We are also making these stories into animation. Apart from this, we’ll soon be bringing some biographies and documentaries. By the next 5 years, we hope to release 100 IPs. We plan to indulge in regional and global content as well along with different kinds of genres.
