India Gets its First Startup to Use Data Analytics in Bollywood

Entertainment makes us happy and one cannot ignore movies when we think about it. Bollywood movies are colorful and are known for their over-the-top costumes and makeup, especially for women. It is a multi-million-dollar industry, producing over 1000 movies a year!

The success of a movie largely depends on the audience conversions and ratings. How do you rate a movie you just saw in the theatre? You probably tell friends and family to watch or skip it? Or, you rate them on websites. But what if, you already know if the movie is going to be a hit or flop. This is the question which every movie director, producer or the cast embrace throughout the launch. To make the journey easy, a startup backed by Mr. Ratan Tata, Infinite Analytics is connecting the dots between consumers and brands.

The company's artificial intelligence (AI) platform called 'ian' (Infinite Analytics Nucleus) offers product recommendation system and represent it across all channels. Most recently, Infinite Analytics Nucleus has worked on applying data analytics to pull audiences for the movie "Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aana".

"We look at a number of data points across social media to understand patterns. It allows us to identify and reach niche audiences for a particular subject," said co-founder Akash Bhatia of Infinite Analytics. "In this case—Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aana—there are certain peculiarities about the movie. For example, there is a certain kind of clothing mentioned in the movie. Our platform is able to pick up (via social media) what kind of audience would like that kind of clothing, that color, down to that minute detail."

This is the first-time analytics is being used to pull audiences for a Bollywood movie, said Ratnaa Sinha, director of Shaadi Mein Zaroor l Aana. "I gave (Bhatia) these targets: I wanted the (movie trailers) to be visible, for people to respond to it, and convert this into tickets.", he further added.

Infinite Analytics identified the lead actor Rajkummar Rao's previous preferences in terms of films, music, food, books and recommended the same for this movie. The outcome was surprising. The trailer of the film reached a million hits within five days of its release. "Two rupees per view is the industry standard. So, for one million views, it should be? INR 20 lacs. We are doing it for about INR 30,000," said Bhatia, who is also a co-founder of ticketing company Kyazoonga. The success of data analytics for the movie is quite visible with a rating of 8.4 on IMDb and 3 on Times of India reviews.

The use of analytics is proliferating fast from fashion to media and entertainment. We all are now getting used to picking up our favorite movies on Netflix with predictive analytics running in the background. If you like Star Trek on Netflix, the first title that the website is likely to suggest you is Mission Impossible. This is the power of an invisible array of algorithms working on different websites offering recommendations. And, with changing preferences, the pattern also changes.

Data analytics holds a significant potential for the media and entertainment industry. It is becoming an important part of companies' growth strategy enabling them to gain insights into their customers. These insights can help companies to optimize their marketing efforts and deliver a better product. Needless to say, without analytics, companies are in the dark about their customers. Inevitably, companies with data have an advantage over those who run on pure intuition.

While this is the first instance where data analytics is being used for a Bollywood movie, the time is not far when every movie will have a team of analysts predicting and contributing to the box-office success. For movies with a small budget, data analytics will be a game changer and help to make a special place in the hearts of the audience.