California’s Distro TV partners Raj Nayak’s House of Cheer

DistroTV, a free ad-supported streaming television platform and a division of the California-based media technology company DistroScale, has partnered with media veteran Raj Nayak’s company House of Cheer to on board south Asian TV channels for better distribution.

DistroTV primarily caters to the US, the UK and Canadian population, and has more than 150 channels on the platform, including Bloomberg, EuroNews, Us Weekly and others.

Its latest move is to offer premier Indian channel content through a free bundle service called DistroTV Desi, the company said in a statement. This bundle offers diverse content focusing on entertainment, lifestyle and news geared toward the South East Asian population abroad and airs it in native languages including Punjabi, Hindi and Gujarati among others. Channels such as Times Now, Mirror Now, Wion TV, Zoom, Times Navbharat, Republic World, Republic Bharat and Mastiii TV are already available on the platform that is in discussion with 15 to 20 other firms including those in regional languages Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam.

“Today’s broadcasters and content creators face a few critical challenges. They struggle with the cost of content delivery, with understanding how to best drive viewership, and with how to effectively market and monetize their content. We aim to address all of these issues so that content creators can focus solely on their craft,” Navdeep Saini, co-founder and CEO of DistroScale, parent company of DistroTV said in a statement.

Nayak, managing director, House of Cheer and an advisor to Distro TV, said the platform makes it easier than ever for Indian content creators and channels to distribute and monetise their content globally, without worrying about the setup, infrastructural, and ad costs, which is a huge savings on their bottom line.

Former Viacom18 chief operating officer, Nayak had floated media and entertainment company called House of Cheer in 2019, specialising in creation, curation and consultancy. Business Journal