Live video pioneer Puneet Johar to expand to rest of Asia

Co-founder and CEO of #fame, the live online video platform, talks about his expansion plans and the lessons learnt along the way.
#fame recently recorded three million active users. What fine tuning did you do?

#fame has pioneered the online live video phenomenon in India. While pioneering a tech innovation, we have also provided a platform to upcoming content creators - from amateur comedians to singers, fashionistas and other social media enthusiasts - to showcase their skills and build a community. It took us six months to reach one million users. We achieved that in December 2015. Subsequently, we tripled our user base in three months.

We work with over 20,000 influencers and 75,000 creators, some with more than 50,000 followers, to ensure that the content is consistently compelling, timely and presented in a user-friendly format. But we are also overjoyed that celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan, Richa Chadda, Soha Ali Khan, and Lauren Gottlieb, among others have engaged with their fans in interesting ways, from AskMeAnything sessions to live cooking lessons.

The app has expanded to Thailand and Indonesia. What are the key differences and similarities between the audiences?

Indonesia has behaved like India in terms of adoption with over 200,000 users in three months and a preference for engaging in chats. Celebs such as Andien and Verrell Bramasta along with prominent groups such as JKT 48 are regular users.

Thailand has been a revelation. We have seen a much higher watch time per user and more users beaming consistently. There, #fame has emerged amongst the top 3 live video platforms with 100,000 plus active users within a month. The platform also features top Thai celebrities like Pancake Khemanit, Nick Kunatip, Kanninich, Jayda Saranya and celebrities from One9stand.

What kind of content do the three countries consume most?

We bucket the popular content in four categories, mainly being talent-led, opinion-led, show-and-tell and advice. Across categories - entertainment, music, lifestyle, fitness, astrology are the most popular.

Do you intend to monetise on the stickers that are popular?

It will be a fremium model where a large number of localised emoticons continue to be free on the platform. Premium stickers, as a way to acknowledge someone's performance, will be the way forward. However, we will continue to expand our pool of free stickers and localised emoticons as well.

What are your key learnings?

The key learning has been that while you need a tech or product innovation at the heart of the business, it's how you execute and build an organisation around it. Our ability to engage with social influencers and execute locally has been the differentiator.

Do you plan to expand to other countries?

We are definitely expanding to other South-east Asian markets, including Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia. We are also exploring other markets in Asia and will firm up our launch plans once we have assessed them completely.