BREATHE: A Conversation with Bollywood Super Producer Vikram Malhotra the Founder & CEO of Abundantia Entertainment
Vikram Malhotra is the Founder & CEO of Abundantia Entertainment, a company formed in 2013 with the vision of being the best and most-admired creator and enabler of content in the Indian media & entertainment ecosystem.
Formerly the Chief Operating Officer of Viacom18 Motion Pictures, one of India’s largest motion pictures studios, Vikram is the name behind some of the Indian film industry’s most-loved films in the last few years. At Viacom18, Vikram built an enviable track record for the studio - from critically acclaimed box-office hits like Kahaani, Gangs of Wasseypur, Special 26, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Madras Cafe and Queen, to mass entertainers like OMG – Oh My God, Pyaar Ka Punchnama and Tanu Weds Manu, to name a few.
Led by Vikram, Abundantia created a buzz in the digital space with India’s premiere Amazon Original, ‘Breathe’. After a very successful first season, the show is currently in post-production for its second season, which marks the digital debut of movie stars Abhishek Bachchan. In March 2019, Abundantia also announced its latest venture in the OTT originals space with THE END, which has superstar Akshay Kumar leading the cast. THE END is also an Amazon Prime Original and is being heralded as India’s first global tent-pole show. There is an active pipeline of digital content under development at Abundantia, which includes a serialized drama based on the book ‘Men Who Killed Gandhi’, and a multi-season procedural series on the bestselling ‘Rita Ferreira’ books.
Prior to entering the Entertainment industry, Vikram has spent more than a decade building brands and businesses across leading companies such as The UB Group (spirits, airlines, sports), Tata Communications (retail internet) and SC Johnson – Draft FCB (FMCG).
In our EXCLUSIVE Interview, Vikram tells us about the focus of Abundant Entertainment, the growth in the Digital Space and what’s in store for Breathe Season 2....
What is Abundantia Entertainment’s main focus and objective?
Abundantia is all about creating uniquely Indian stories for a global audience. We are focused on creating content that has a distinct voice but a universal appeal.
Abundantia and I are focused on enabling talented storytellers to create content for the younger, progressive audience, for tomorrow. As a result of this thinking, we have picked up subjects, worked with talent, and marketed in manners that have been innovative and path- breaking.
Our attempt is to create insightful and inspiring stories with a global appeal that are anchored in strong human emotions and in a uniquely Indian form of storytelling.
What is Abundantia’s incubation model of filmmaking?
The objective is to create winning partnerships with talent in all areas of making film and digital content viz. writing, directing, producing, acting as well as distribution and marketing front. And for building this model, it is important that the confluence of content happens across consumption platforms.
The Digital space is quie important for Abundantia’s growth, how do you see that happening in the future?
Abundantia is a company that is created on two important building blocks. The first is that we are a company that listens very closely to what our audience is saying, which means that we have our ear to the ground and we pay attention to the trends and preferences that our audience is depicting, especially the younger audience.
The second building block, which leads us to become a pioneer in the digital space, is the fact that we pride ourselves on creating stories and partnering with storytellers that are made for a progressive audience. Accordingly, we spent a couple of years understanding the whole world, understanding what audiences like, their dislikes, and what kinds of stories will or will not work.
Taking these learnings generated over the last few years, we created our first digital show, ‘Breathe’. Nearly 40% of Breathe’s viewers were outside of India. This gave us the confidence to invest more, and build more to the extent that digital is now the new state business for Abundantia.
Subsequently, we increased our mission to create content, to create stories that are Indian at heart but have universal emotions such that they can travel the globe. ‘The End’ is one such show, which we announced recently, featuring Akshay Kumar, on Amazon Prime Video.
What are the elements that you keep in mind while creating certain kinds of content for specific platforms, and how does it differentiate itself from the rest of the online content?
We are very clear in our vision for the digital world, that we will operate in the premium storytelling phase, which means that we will work with platforms that cater to the upper-mid to the premium end of the segment. What we look for in platforms most importantly is a wavelength match of creative sensibility, and everything else follows.
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