India, April 2023: The platform recently achieved a revenue milestone of INR 13 million from ticketing sales in the first year of its operations. Pocket Cinema which was launched with a mere funding of INR 4 crore, reached more than 1.22 Lac downloads in just the first year. As per data till Jan 2023, the platform’s monthly active users were 25,300 and daily active users were 1,242.
The platform managed ticketing revenue of INR 1.04 CR (till the end of Jan 2023). Further, it is significant to note that the customer acquisition cost is as low as INR 108. The platform earns from ticketing revenue, where-in 30% of the ticketing revenue of every show is the platform’s ticketing revenue; 70% is shared back as prize money. Advertising revenue has also started.
According to founder duo and Co-CEOs of Pocket Cinema – Anshuman Singh and Anil Verma “Being a GOTT (Gaming + OTT) platform we are not completely dependent on content. Consumers pay and watch our content more than once, as it increases their chances of winning, considering that the probability of answering correctly increases with repeat watch. We have reached and expanded our consumer base organically and have repeat consumers. Almost 43% of our consumers pay and watch content at least 3.5 times in a month. Moreover, according to a report by IAMAI and Kantar, about 351 million of India’s 692 million active internet users are in the rural parts of the country, where internet penetration stands at 37%. And India is still the second largest online market in the world; thus, the scope of growth is truly immense”. The platform is vernacular with one language as of now; the other languages are in the pipeline.
They further add that the platform also offers a unique last mile connectivity to brands wherein all associated brands get to plug in their brand advertisements within the movie and the questions related to the brand ads are also a part of the questions asked after every movie. This ensures that the consumer watches the movie and the ads carefully, which works well for the brands as it helps them maximize the retention of their message at the last mile. Pocket Cinema plans to create and market more marquee properties like “Late Night Show” and morning “Bhakti Mein Shakti” as special events to various brands.