“Anime is a state of being” – Sony YAY! Marketing Head on the future of anime in India beyond Naruto (Exclusive)

Recently, Sportskeeda had the opportunity to speak to Sony YAY!’s marketing head, Sujoy Roy Bardhan, about the channel’s future plans regarding anime and its growth in India. Anime in India has recently seen a rapid boom, and it is in no small part due to the broadcasting corporations that are trying to bring it to this country.

Sony YAY!, a pay television channel under Culver Max Entertainment that has broadcast mostly animation and cartoons since its conception in 2017, has recently forayed into anime with Naruto and seen record success. We were delighted to learn that not only is Sony YAY! branching out into known shonen titles such as Jujutsu Kaisen and Fullmetal Alchemist, but they are also investing in more Anime-oriented productions in Japan and channels in India.

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From Naruto to Black Clover, Sony YAY! has great plans for anime in India

Sujoy Roy Bardhan, Sony YAY!'s Marketing Head (Image via Sony YAY!)

Sony YAY!, predominantly known as a children’s entertainment channel, operates in India under the larger Sony Pictures Television Inc. Recently, it saw notable success with Naruto, followed by Naruto Shippuden, the latter of which is currently being broadcast by Sony YAY!. How this idea and the subsequent success came about was the first thing Mr. Bardhan mentioned.

“So we have an evening block, which plays only anime. We've seen that the block has performed very, very well for us. The block as an idea was to extend the TG of Sony YAY!, to get more audiences to come and rest on the channel. We believe that the kind of content that anime is, caters to not just kids, but also older audiences."

Mr. Bardhan continued,

"Now, the success that we saw with the block gave us the encouragement to launch two exclusive anime channels, which are Anime Local and Anime Booth. Now these channels rest as a VAS proposition on Tata Play and Airtel DTH platforms. The kind of numbers that we have got for this is, for example, we've got monthly subscription numbers as high as two lakhs per month on both these platforms put together."

Speaking about the numbers, Mr.Bardhan further added,

"Now, that tells us that anime is a popular genre of content viewing because we are seeing more than 70 million people in a 15 years plus age group, who are watching this content on television on Sony YAY!. This clearly tells us that not only have we succeeded with our plan for extending the audience, but also that there is a very important section that not only watches anime but is also ready to pay for an extra VAS proposition on Tata Play and Airtel, because these propositions are 55 rupees a channel.”

Given that this success has mostly arrived on the back of Naruto, we enquired why Sony YAY! selected the series. Naruto is one of the first mainstream anime to have been introduced to India alongside Dragon Ball Z, and it remains one of the Big 3 in shonen anime. Elaborating on their selection process for the series, Mr. Bardhan said:

“I think we picked up Naruto about one and a half two years back. And see, Naruto is also a classic anime, right? It has been there for a while. Its popularity in Japan and the rest of the world is very, very high. But what Naruto allowed us to do is look at a complete 360 degree, or an ecosystem approach towards creating that or establishing the IP in India."

He added,

"What Naruto has in India today is not just the content, but it also has 1000 plus SQS across 200 plus designs which straddle across multiple categories, like apparel and toys and access footwear, FMCG products, back-to-school products and so on and so forth."

Highlighting the popularity and potential of Naruto, Mr. Bardhan said,

"Because it is popular at some certain level, it also kind of helped people to take on the licensing of Naruto into multiple categories, wherein Naruto is now available in 5000 plus offline stores in India. We are really seeding Naruto as a brand across multiple cities at multiple tier groups.”

Sony YAY! broadcasts both Naruto and Naruto Shippuden (Image via Studio Pierrot)

Any talk of Naruto automatically brings up a mention of Boruto, but Sony YAY! doesn’t have any current plans of broadcasting the sequel. This, of course, brought up the topic of other mainstream anime being introduced to the Indian otaku diet.

When asked whether Sony YAY! plans to go into more well-known anime across the world, such as Dragon Ball or One Piece, Mr. Bardhan replied:

“We are doing even better. What we are doing is that there are certain shows that have worked very well for us, and we are going ahead and co-producing some of these shows in Japan. So to give you an example, Obocchama-Kun is one such show which was on the channel for a very long period of time. It is a very old show in terms of its library.

Now, because the show has done so well, we have gone ahead and tied up with the people who produce it in Japan, and now co producing that content for us in India. In addition to that, we have signed up on a lot more other content, like Black Clover, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Jujutsu Kaisen.”

We also discussed Sony YAY!’s plans to diversify their reach by adding more dubs to the mix, since the channel, outside of anime, is served in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Bangla. Mr. Bardhan expressed his wish to add dubs in more languages to make viewing more relatable to their target audience:

“What we realized is, while the storyline is very relatable for the Indian audiences, if we do not do justice to these story lines by serving this content in the local languages like you are rightly suggesting to the audiences, it will not gain popularity, and I think that is one of the key reasons why this content has taken off as well. So what we are doing is we are serving this content on our channel in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Malayalam.”

Sony YAY! is co-producing Obocchama-kun (Image via Shin-Ei Animation)

The final segment we put forward was the topic of age and variety. Anime is an art form consisting of content in various genres, most of which are not children-friendly. Sony YAY! is a predominantly kids’ channel, and even for Naruto, which delves into heavy themes and adult notions, they have had to assign an evening block.

Mr. Bardhan agreed that Sony YAY! needed anime-specific channels in order to allow their older viewers more freedom, and this thought was largely responsible for the creation of Anime Local and Anime Booth. The contribution of profit originating from this well of older audiences was also brought up.

Sportskeeda: “How much would you say that, in terms of profit, your inclination to foray into Anime depends on the fact that people who can pay their own subscription are interested in this art form, as opposed to cartoons, where children are dependent on their parents for the subscription?"

Sujoy Roy Bardhan: “Pocket potential is a definite priority, because they are also themselves decision makers. But I would point out a huge difference that Anime has to other viewership. I think Anime allows viewers to have a very strong feeling of fandom, a strong feeling of community, a strong feeling of wanting to be associated with a certain anime title and its character and a storyline.

So the dichotomy of it truly is that it is meant for audiences who are not kids, but there is a lot of kid-like attitudinal pieces. Because you want to own a piece of the anime, much like how you would want to own a piece of your favorite character when you were much younger, which is wanting to wear apparel that are connected to it, or accessorize or own certain figurines of it, and so on and so forth. Which is the reason why I think that Anime is not just content, it is a state of being for an anime fan.”

Anime’s popularity in India is a rather recent development. Anime fans suffered the same prejudices and ostracization in India in the early 2000s as the rest of the world, perhaps even more so. However, there has always been a permeating presence of anime in India, but we seldom recognized it before this recent mania.

While a lot of Indian audiences don't really consider Pokemon, Shin-chan or Doraemon to be anime, they are, in nature, anime. Sony YAY! has also previously broadcast anime like Shin-chan, Robotan, and Tensai Bakabon before introducing Naruto to the mix. When asked about this, Mr. Bardhan had some interesting insights.

“I think if you just look at a simple Google Trends analysis of it, that will give you a great indication of how exponentially this popularity has actually grown since, say, around 2019 onwards. And you will see that it is almost like a hockey stick growth with respect to the trend. There are a few things that can be attributed to that.

One of those simply is the time during COVID wherein a lot of people were looking for newer content to be sampled, and anime, because of its rich library, though available in a very scattered format, really allowed people to start sampling it and then gained popularity. So that kind of kickstarted the growth of anime in India.

Now we realize that anime has potential, which is not just resting on the channel, but has a holistic potential to it, and that's why our investment into Naruto kind of helped us do so much more with respect to getting more content on the channel, getting more channels to serve only as anime channels, and so on and so forth.

So Comic Con is one part of it. If you also see the kind of meetups that anime fans are having and the conversations that are there on social media, the simple pieces that we need to do in terms of communication when we are launching a show and how quickly it gets virality on the social platforms, are clear indications of not only how many people are there, but also how deep their bond or loyalty is towards anime.”

Sony YAY! has broadcast Shin-chan and Robotan in India (Image via Shin-Ei Animation, Tokyo Movie Shinsha)

Indian audiences, even that of Sony YAY!, are used to consecutive seasons, long-running shows, and a dedicated timeslot. The concept of seasonal anime might be foreign to them. It’s a wise move to begin the journey into anime with long-running series like Naruto or One Piece.

Mr. Bardhan, like most recent Indian anime fans, is fairly new to the craft and has been introduced to Ghibli first, which he loved and praised wholeheartedly. He is of the mind that,

“To be able to understand the nuances of anime, you have to be, at some level, a consumer of it.”

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Final thoughts

Anime is largely considered to be children’s entertainment simply because it is animated. A prominent kids’ channel such as Sony YAY! engaging in the broadcasting doesn’t necessarily disprove that notion. However, the steps the channel is taking to deliver anime to the Indian fanbase are a step in the right direction.

Sony already operates Crunchyroll, which is a subscription-based digital platform and making it out of reach of a large section of fans. The involvement of Sony YAY! not only makes anime more accessible to a regular Indian household but also lends more validity to anime as a popular medium. Hopefully, this venture will lead more and more established corporations to look at anime as both a profitable avenue and an essential content to have on their repertoire.

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