Mumbai: Telugu language video streaming service aha has announced a partnership with Green Gold Animation to foray into kids content. The partnership will see aha launch six animated originals in the next 12 months and acquire 100 hours of content from the animation company.

aha plans to launch its first animated original “Maha Ganesha” on 10 September coinciding with Ganesh Chaturthi. The show will feature in a separate ‘kids’ section under the aha brand and will be followed by more releases on Children’s Day, Christmas, and so forth. This is the first original animated production that will be in the Telugu language, said the platform in a statement.

The first season of “Maha Ganesha” will have eight episodes. aha kids content will be available to existing subscribers at no additional cost. To attract new viewers, it will stream its first episodes for free so that kids can sample its content.

“This generation of kids have grown up with Marvel and DC superheroes. We want to bring back the stories that our grandmothers used to tell us, produced by one of the best animation companies in the world – Green Gold Animation," said aha, chief executive officer, Ajit Thakur.

“We believe kids are an important member of the family and that we should prepare a separate pipeline of content. Our tagline 'Our Stories Our Values' came from aha’s positioning which is 100 per cent local,” he added.

Thakur believes that launching kids content on the platform will increase the stickiness with existing subscribers as well as bring news subscribers to the OTT platform. “If a family believes that our content is good for their kids, they will pay a premium for it,” he said.

“When we started conceptualising a kids’ original, I thought nothing better than to launch a show on Ganesha because he is the remover of obstacles," said Green Gold Animation, chief executive officer, Rajiv Chilaka. "Maha Ganesha will feature various stories from the life of Ganesh – the story of his birth, why he cursed the moon, the rivalry between him and his brother. These stories will be told over a span of eight episodes. When you do puja on Ganesh Chaturthi, you will find these stories locally in books. I feel today’s kids’ attention span is different from previous generations, so what if we told them these stories in animation. Hence, we came up with this idea."

Speaking about kids content on TV, Chilaka said, “The advertising monetisation of kids content on TV has not matched the viewership. There are very few brands that target kids. But in the SVOD ecosystem that’s a very different thing. We’re competing with TV and other entertainment platforms. The OTT medium allows much more flexibility in viewership.”

Currently, aha has no plans to dub its animated content into other South languages.