India’s Clean Slate Filmz Launches Clean OTT For Women

Indian production house  Clean Slate Filmz has announced the launch of a new digital platform,  Clean OTT. It is being pegged as the world’s first women’s OTT.  Clean Slate Filmz is a joint venture of Bollywood star Anushka Sharma and her brother Karnesh Ssharma. Ssharma says that the unique aspect of his latest offering is that it is world’s only digital platform for women. Clean OTT will be launched in the first quarter of 2023, a press statement from the production house said.

Sharing his excitement, Ssharma says, “It is an exciting time for us, we have been working on it for the past one year. Structuring, finding people to support us. What we are rolling out is the world’s first women’s OTT. It is an OTT that is woman-first, woman-forward, and will tell mythic to modern stories from the lens of women.” 

Agreeing that there are too many digital platforms, Ssharma says, “Yes, there are many platforms and the number grew rapidly over the past few years. But, this is the only platforms for women.”

Clean OTT content will comprise of international as well as regional projects. It will be driven by an annual subscription SVOD model and will initially launch in India before expanding to markets such as the UK, USA, Canada, and the UAE.

Talking about the market segmentation, Ssharma says, “We believe there is a unique opportunity to expand content. For example, women make up 50% of viewership in India yet most of the content is male focused or represents women in a secondary fashion. “We are confident the Clean OTT narratives will appeal to everyone as we provide a platform free of prejudice. This will give women a voice that can be enjoyed by any demographic around the world and for those who are part of our productions, a path for career progression.”

Elaborating on the much-talked about deal with Netflix and Amazon, says he doesn’t have the liberty to list out the projects, but adds, “These are eight titles that we have. We will be releasing them in the next 12-18 months. There are about 3-4 films and 3-4 series. The series will be in a three-season format.” 

Asked about the poor performance of Netflix in India, Ssharma should not talk about any particular platform. “The digital platforms work on certain mandates that they get based on data and analysis. Based on the appeal of their subscribers, the platforms work on certain kinds of content. For us (as a production house), it is important for us to stick to our idea of the content instead of bothering about the programming standards of the platform.”

He adds, “What we really enjoy is stories from fresh talents. For all of our films and shows, we have first-time directors. We really pride on the fact that we encourage new and fresh cinematic voices, telling stories in a fresher manner. They are all entertaining as well as enlightening. The success of Bulbul and Pataal Lok gave the platforms the trust to back our stories. We are majorly concerned about focusing on our stories, and then just hope that the platform has these kinds of stories in their programming.”

Clean Slate Filmz is all set to become the launch vehicle for late actor Irrfan Khan’s son Babil who makes his debut with Qala.