Ekta Kapoor built her own OTT app. Now she's betting on YouTube

Rahel Philipose (0:00)

In the early 2000s, every weekday at 10:30 pm, Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahuti ruled Indian TVs. And in 2001, when the show killed off a main character, nationwide protests made the show bring him back. More than a dozen women in white sarees showed up at the actor's home to mourn. Other viewers actually pelted stones at the Balaji Telefilms office in Mumbai. And within 10 days, Ekta Kapoor, the producer of the show, brought the character back. And in true soap opera fashion, with amnesia. The episode with his return was watched by one in every five TV screens that were being measured in the country.

That's the kind of hold Kapoor and her production house had over Indian audiences. And as people slowly started moving from TV screens to phone screens and streaming, Balaji followed them with its own app. In 2017, it launched ALTBalaji, later renamed to Just ALT. 8 years later now though, that app is gone. It had actually been losing money for years and the final nail in the coffin came last year when the government banned it along with 24 other apps for obscene content. Kapoor and her family actually distanced themselves from the app by saying that they'd ended their association with it all the way back in 2021

And now, India's queen of TV soaps has a new plan to meet viewers where they're at. Early this month, Balaji announced 5 new shows with a combined 200 episodes premiering over this festive season. They're all going to be shot in 4K, they're all going to be premium, and all of them are going to be free to watch on YouTube. That's when Balaji already has a multi-year deal with Netflix. So, why are these new shows going to be free and why on YouTube? Well, part of the answer could be the tough spot that Netflix is currently in.

Twice in less than a week this month, two major Wall Street banks warned investors to be cautious about betting on Netflix. Both Wells Fargo and HSBC said the same thing. That Netflix hasn't had any big hits recently and YouTube has been taking over TV screens. Recent US data from a Nielsen study showed that YouTube captured a record 14.2% of TV viewing. Netflix captured only a little more than half that, at 7.8%, which was actually less than the 8.8% it had last year. In India, meanwhile, viewers are returning to TV screens. The connected TV audience here grew from about 130 million in 2025 to over 200 million in 2026 And according to Comscore data from the last two years, YouTube is a platform with the most reach on these TVs. So this time Ekta Kapoor is betting on following this audience because she thinks she knows exactly who they are and what they want.

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So who is Kapoor making this shift for?

She explained the case for the partnership in a recent variety report. She said that there's an audience that no one is really serving. These are the Indians who don't watch broadcast TV. They're not sitting in front of screens at 10:30 PM every day. And they aren't fully serviced by the more niche content on paid apps. Kapoor believes that young Indians want content that is relatable, which isn't exactly fully niche or fully mass. She calls them a TV Plus audience. People who have given up on appointment viewing time in favor of what she calls comfort viewing, but not their appetite for long running stories. And there's actually evidence that this audience does exist on YouTube. Look at how well Pakistani shows have been doing on the platform, which we'll get into details soon. Now like I mentioned earlier, ALT had never really taken off. In FI22 for example, it made a little more than 100 crore rupees on revenue, but lost nearly 140 crore rupees. After its shutdown last year, its streaming has now been through different platforms.

Even right now, the slate that Balaji is releasing on YouTube includes the returning seasons of fan-favorite shows that used to air on ALT like Kehne Ko Ham Safar Hai season 4 and Haq Se season 2 Both shows are returning after 6-8 years and their older seasons are available on Jio Hall Star to stream on a free subscription.

And, there's a few reasons why YouTube is right now the preferred platform.

One is the consolidation, which helps with discoverability. See, if you tune in to Kapoor's channel for one show, you end up learning about the 4 other new ones as well. And that increases the chances of you actually watching them. Then there's the details of the partnership announcement, which shows that right now, Balaji gets to keep the IP for all the shows Balaji is producing for Netflix, while YouTube pastes the studio through ads and brand deals. That gives Balaji 3 other things. One of course, like I said, is the IP. And here's why that makes such a big difference. You see, having the IP allows Balaji to do pretty much anything it wants with a show even after the initial YouTube run. That could be more seasons, remakes in different languages, or contexts, or it could even decide to license the show to other broadcasters or platforms for more reach.