Star gears up for MIPCOM

Star gears up for MIPCOM

 Ashutosh Mordekar

MIPCOM is where the ‘stars’ align for business. And so it is that Star India will be participating for the eighth consecutive time at MIPCOM this year, armed to its teeth with content including Hindi and regional programs.

There’s no undermining how important MIPCOM is, even for an established entity such as Star India, whose programs have takers not only in India but all over the world. Star India vice president Ashutosh Mordekar puts it well saying: “MIPCOM is the biggest aggregation of content buyers and sellers across the globe. It provides a platform to showcase our content to buyers across the world.”

Ashutosh Mordekar believes the market provides an opportunity to meet and transact with new as well as existing clients

Mordekar also believes the market provides an opportunity to meet and transact with new as well as existing clients.

Star will be focussing on markets like Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and CIS region and Central Asia.

Coming to what’s new from the Star stable, Mordekar says: “Star is showcasing the epic Mahabharat which is the most expensive show coming from India. The show is already garnering interest across Asia and Europe, and buyers have already indicated their interest.”

Explaining why Indian content is very well accepted in global markets, he reasons: “The world is currently opening up to Indian content in a big way. Indian content is at present just breaking out. We are at the end of stage one, where the content has been sampled in various countries through initial foothold deals and the success of these shows has created a huge interest in fresh content coming from India.”

While it is generally felt that the production value of Indian content has gone up in recent times, is it really up-to-speed with international standards? “Yes! The last couple of years have seen a huge leap in the production value of our shows. Be it HD, Dolby 5.1 Sound etc. - the production values today are comparable to the best in the world,” quips Mordekar.

About the platforms the network plans to target at MIPCOM, he says: “We are going to be in discussions for exploiting our content on IPTV, mobile, VOD (Voice on demand) or free-to-air platforms.”

Optimistic about the results of participation, Mordekar is looking forward to this year’s fest.