Exclusive! Soumya Mukherjee on Hoichoi’s new slate: Shows like Sampurna and Noshtoneer have also created awareness and hence we have new seasons

From Srijit Mukherji’s Durgo Rawhoshyo to Deboshree Roy’s debut on OTT with Chemistry Mashi to the brand new seasons of their successful shows, including Indu, Gora, Sampurna, Bodhon, and others – Hoichoi presents a glamorous slate in their Season 7 announcement. With a mix of drama, detective thrillers, classics, and women-centric stories, the OTT platform’s plan for the year looks ambitious and full of surprise elements. In a chat with OTTplay, Soumya Mukherjee, COO and one of the key honchos of Hoichoi, talked about their plans and vision to bring bigger-scale projects for their audience. Read on…

Also read: Exclusive! Ritwick Chakraborty to play the lead in a lawyer franchise, Achinta Aich, on Hoichoi 

What is the aim of Hoichoi this season?

This is our seventh season. In the past years, a lot has happened. Hoichoi went through a lot of changes. One of our biggest objectives is to diversify our content. We have seen a lot of growth in the last year. This year, our focus is on the content we are bringing in. We are announcing 24 new shows. Then there is a theatrical release (Shri Swapankumar-er Badami Hyena’r). We showcased the teaser at the event. We have introduced new categories like the Best of Bengal – based on our literary works. Srijit Mukherji’s Byomkesh and Parineeta are there in this category. We are also bringing back our acclaimed category, World Classic. We are introducing new content, based on Romeo and Juliet. Then there are the next seasons of many shows, including Indu, Noshtoneer, Bodhon, and Sampurna.

Also read: Exclusive! Ishaa Saha, Saurav Das and Swastika Dutta in Abhrajit Sen’s series, Samparka 

Hoichoi has been doing a lot of women-centric series of late. There are more on the cards. Is it a market demand or an in-house call?

It is a mix of both. We always experiment with our genre. When we launched Indu a couple of years ago, we saw immense traction on our platform. There was almost 3x to 4x growth in our weekly and monthly numbers. Then we started creating shows like Uttoron, Sampurna, etc. When we did Sampurna, our numbers exploded on the platform. Then we did Bodhon and Noshtoneer. All of these shows gave us record numbers, each beating the previous one. We realised that such shows have a big audience. We are bringing back the shows that really performed well. Then we saw a lot of our customers across the world communicate with us through mail. They appreciated the content and the subject for creating awareness on issues like marital rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment and the subsequent #MeToo movement. This overwhelming response impacted our overall strategy.

There has always been feedback that Hoichoi doesn’t often touch large-scale projects and most of the time deals with family drama…

As I said, our focus has always been on the subject, rather than the scale. For us, Sampurna is a big project. It is not that we compromise on the budget. A call is taken based on the script, talent, and production value. Also, I don’t think viewers are keen to watch such shows on OTT, especially on a people-driven platform like Hoichoi.

But in Hoichoi also, we have seen the success of a show like Mandaar…

We keep on doing such shows. This year, we have the Hoichoi World Classic, which will be a visual marvel. Srijit’s Durgo Rawhoshyo is another example. Then there is Parineeta. Once you see the preview of Durgo Rawhoshyo, you will see the scale. We look at doing such portrayals also. There is another example, Eken Babu. It started from Hoichoi and snowballed into something big. For its theatrical films, we see Eken Babu travel to North Bengal, Rajasthan, etc. However, for web series, it has usually been around Kolkata. This time, Eken Babu and his team went to a forest. So that will also be an interesting watch.