Hyderabad: “Movies run on three things – entertainment, entertainment and entertainment,” goes the dialogue mouthed by Vidya Balan in a Bollywood blockbuster. It’s the same mantra that city-based startup YuppTV and its founder Uday Reddy swear by and used in a ‘smart’ way to script a success story that unfolded between 2006 and 2010 spanning three continents – North and South Americas and Asia.

A first generation entrepreneur from Warangal, Reddy understood two things well. First, that Telugus in India and abroad love their cinema and TV shows. Second, that technology can change the dynamics of viewing entertainment channels.

And it is this knowledge that Reddy, who used to work in the US, leveraged. “In traditional cable and DTH TVs, a broadcaster shows a particular content at a fixed time. But we stored it on the cloud, allowing people to view their favourite programmes at their convenience on devices like mobile, tablets or TV,” he explains.

He smartly fused technology and TV channels using his experience working with German electronics giant Siemens AG for three years and with Canadian telecom major Nortel Networks Corporation for 11 years. “During my days with Nortel, I was working on mobile TV in Trinidad & Tobago, where around 40% of the population is of Indian origin. It is there that I got the idea to start YuppTV, where content can be delivered over the internet to Indians staying abroad,” Reddy says.

So in 2006, Reddy, then in the US, started working on the technology part along with a team of 4-5 people in Hyderabad. YuppTV was registered both, in Hyderabad and Atlanta, and for the first few months his team shared office space with another company in a building in Somajiguda to keep the costs low.

“But the biggest challenge was to convince channels to tie up with us as they had exclusive contracts with big satellite companies. Moreover, they did not understand the internet…it took us almost 1-1.5 years to convince them and the first ones to come on board were TV9 and MAA TV,” he explains.

On the personal front too, the initial days were challenging. Reddy quit a well-paying job in Nortel and gave up an MBA seat at the Kellogg School of Management in 2006 to tinker with YuppTV.

He recalls that YuppTV finally started earning subscription revenues in late 2010 after smart TV sales started picking up in the US. “But in early 2010, the big operator in the US, Dish Network, thought we were threat. For the first time, I put in all my personal wealth…and also took a half-a-million from friends and family. The journey was not smooth but once I was determined…there was no looking back,” he recounts.

Reddy feels the startup has come a long way in the last 10 years, emerging as one of the world’s largest internet-based TV and on-demand service providers for South Asian content, offering more than 300 TV channels, 5,000 movies and 100 TV shows in 14 languages.

“In 2006, there was no Android, only PCs and Windows and we were ahead in the game in terms of integration. Today, if you look at Sony, Samsung and LG…we are one of the largest embedded apps along with Netflix and YouTube. Today, I feel proud to have built a global technology right here in Hyderabad,” he adds.

The mature startup now has a team of 300 people but is still in the investment phase with a focus on content and customer acquisition. It has raised around $75 million so far from KKR, Alabama Fund as well as individual investors.

Reddy points out that the next task at hand is to raise the bar in terms of content. “There is a lot of churn as many youngsters abroad unsubscribe YuppTV after their parents leave as they don’t watch those shows… we have tied up with independent production houses to create content mainly to cater to the youth,” he adds.

Source: Times of India