Tollywood star Mahesh Babu, a brand ambassador for the over-the-top (OTT) platform, joined Uday Reddy, founder and CEO of YuppTV, to launch YuppTV Originals.
“We disrupted the entertainment sector with technology by launching YuppTV in 2006. Now with YuppTV Originals, we aim to disrupt the content space, following the needs of our evolving audience, and our vision of providing high quality engaging content. Besides, YuppTV Originals will empower the content creators by providing direct access to the audience and thereby streamlining distribution,” said Reddy.
Babu said he would “recommend artists and visionaries from the industry to make use of this opportunity to showcase their creative pursuits and connect instantly with the Internet audience”.
YuppTV Originals’ initial focus is on regional content delivered digitally in episodic format, along with some feature film production. YuppTV has partnered with production houses such as iCandy Creations; Early Morning Tales – a division of Vijayanthi Movies; TrendLoud – the digital arm of Vision Times; Madhura Entertainment; and Tamada Media.
Tollywood director Deva Katta said his company iCandy Creations “is delighted to be part of Originals and look forward to a prolonged partnership in producing engaging new-age content”.
He added: “Originals provide immense creative freedom for the evolving talent in the industry. As YuppTV provides a direct reach to the audience it will also help us pool in fresh talent and bring their creativity to the spotlight.”
YuppTV Originals’ first mini-series, Endukila, presented by iCandy Creations, written and directed by Laxman Karya, will be launched during Ugadi, followed by a series produced by Swapna Dutt’s Early Morning Tales (a division of Vijayanthi Movies) with director supervision from Nandini Reddy. The company already has 25,000 hours of library content, including almost 2,500 hours of on-demand content, which it claims to add on a daily basis. The platform also offers over 250 TV channels.