VICE Media’s recent collaboration with Amazon Prime Video, ‘Cinema Marte Dum Tak’, has received a great response.

e4m spoke to Samira Kanwar, VP-Content, VICE-APAC, about the company's plans for the market and how they see APAC evolving with the changing media landscape.

Speaking about the business of content in India, Kanwar said, "So first of all I run two lines of business, one is a digital side which is our publishing arm, we make content for different formats and the second is what we pitch to platforms. They usually come to us, and they have a strategy in place. We have done three separate cases for Netflix for their show called Indian Predator. We also do non-Hindi content but it depends on the platform and their requirements as per their data and analytics."

While every media house is going hyperlocal with the content offering, Kanwar believes if the story is nice, it will travel. "When it comes to the digital side, what we have realized is that the language is not the barrier, the story is the barrier. If you don't have a good story to tell, it won’t travel, even if it is the most spoken language."

Asked if cutting lengthy content into shorter versions would help gain more traction. she said, "In South East Asia, we have collaborated with TikTok where we are making content with longer duration. So you have to find your own formula. Sometimes, we also cut content for example if there is content in a longer format, we cut it up into parts and they receive views in millions."

On the generation of revenue through collaborations, Kanwar told e4m that the digital side is the investment side whereas the studio side is the revenue side. "Studio is the revenue-generating model. However, collaboration takes years, by that time, I’ll make a lot of original content."

Asked about the future plan for Indian audiences, she said, "The plan is to go more regional and search for good stories in India. If it’s a good story, it will travel. We want to find people in the regions and become the faces of VICE."