The job of an independent video creator doesn’t only end at creating engaging videos for audiences. From ideating, scripting to curation, production and then distribution, along with the management of brand deals to monetise the content, the backend activities are never-ending for video creators.
Realising how much video content is being consumed in India, VCOI (Video Creators of India) entered the market in 2017 to provide backend support to video content creators and tap the growing segment of independent artists. The agency works to grow the audience for creators and monetising their content through brand deals.
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Sanchit Goyal
Sanchit Goyal, Co-Founder, Video Creators of India, explained to BuzzInContent.com why creators need to be managed by a media company and the growth opportunity of the segment.
Goyal also shared company’s plan to enter the gaming and music content category. Currently, the agency handles comedy generic content of videos only, providing them A to Z support. VCOI is also planning to produce YouTube video content with Amit Bhadana for an ecommerce giant.
“The technical work is something creators are not able to manage. We provide creators back-end support related to their statistics. We help them with production, the legal support, their taxation. Unlike others, we just don’t provide rights management support but we also manage brands, social media and everything,” said Goyal.
Signing its first contract with Harsh Beniwal as the first artist, VCOI helped his subscriber base to grow from a few thousands to 5.7m on YouTube, and on Facebook from 70k to 1.7m likes in the last two years. Recently it has signed a contract as the exclusive firm for him. The company manages activities, including endorsements, albums appearances and live performances for Beniwal.
The media company, which started with Facebook operations, now manages the digital profiles of more than 25 exclusive content creators, mostly on YouTube.
“We felt Facebook was more for social activities and connections. YouTube is the platform where a lot of video content is consumed and then gradually we shifted on YouTube,” he said.
Along with a team of social media and YouTube experts, it communicates with an online audience of over 50 million, 75% of which are from tier I and II cities. It also has dedicated script writers who help creators in writing the scripts.
Goyal said, “We help them create the content and in ideation as well, along with helping them out with the distribution of the content on various platforms. Preproduction activity like scripting is also there, without performing major changes in it. It is up to them whether they want to opt it or not. Duration is something which is subjective for the creators, how long or short video he/she wants to create.”
VCOI suggests creators what sort of content would be suitable for them and what style of comedy should be opted.
For creators, to help with brand deals is one of the major activities that VCOI handles. Last year, it did over 200 brand integrations and 20 leading brands successfully utilised its services.
Goyal said its association with Mobile Premier League is one of its biggest associations so far; TikTok, Hello being others. The company plans to expand its base and enter the ecommerce space as well.
“We have a fictional comedy with one of the ecommerce platforms for YouTube along with Amit Bhadana in pipeline,” he added.
“Different parameters are there to choose which brand should go to which creator. Brands are 90% inbound and word of mouth. As a company, we manage the sales and marketing also. We have a list of creators with us, deciding on the budget of the brands, we choose which one should go with whom.”
He said the company hasn’t done any branded content so far.
“Brand integration doesn’t hamper the audience. In a video, we integrate it in a way that if the audience is watching, they would think it is a part of the video, not force-fitted. The audience is also mature; they have started accepting such videos,” he added.
Except for integration, VCOI suggests brands what campaign to choose for videos.
Asked whether in brand deals or any such association, the creator becomes the face of VCOI or is it the opposite, Goyal said, “To the audience, creators are the individual, to the brands we are the face. We don’t hamper the individuality of a creator. We do not own their channel, we manage that. And to the brands, we are the face.”
The company isn’t aggressively signing up creators and is focusing more on its premium members. It has no plans to experiment with creators outside India.
The company plans to enter online gaming and music gaming content soon. Goyal said, “We would be entering the online gaming and music category as well. Not as a label but we would be empowering individual music creators. Just like video, everything would be replicated for music as well.”
VCOI is the parental company. BandzUp handles creators and brands and Nazarbattu is its production hand.
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