APARNA PUROHIT
HEAD OF INDIA ORIGINALS, AMAZON PRIME VIDEO
“India is not an ‘or’ country. It’s not film or TV or OTT. It’s an ‘and’ country. It’s film and TV and OTT. There is room for everything to coexist beautifully,” says Aparna Purohit. She beams through my screen, zoom-ready in her suburban Mumbai apartment—kohled eyes, silver danglers, a hint of a white handloom kurta. She’s not speaking to me in the abstract. Even before the great lockdown binge, India’s OTT market value spiked from 2,150 crore in 2018 to 35 billion in 2019, with about 40 players (and counting). Amazon Prime, now a leading one, earned a ringing endorsement from founder and CEO Jeff Bezos who stated earlier this year, “Nowhere in the world is Prime Video doing better than in India, and we are planning to double down on our investments here.”
Over the last five years, Purohit, as head of India Originals, has created a stellar repertoire that includes shows such as Made In Heaven and Pataal Lok, films like Gulabo Sitabo and Shakuntala Devi, and the comedy series Comicstaan, to name a few. So what’s the secret sauce behind her brand of modern, complex yet nuanced content that has viewers hooked and begging for more (think jonesing for your fix of Mirzapur season two that is finally releasing later this month)? “Shrinking timelines to get customers what they want is my greatest challenge right now,” she confesses. The pressure is on, but it’s their “customer-backwards approach” that she credits. “What is need-gap? I felt there was fertile space for long-form content that is authentic to who we are.” Be it line producing at UTV or running the screenwriters lab at National Film Development Corporation’s (NFDC) Film Bazaar, Purohit has been training to fill this gap from the get-go.
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