Mumbai: Disney Star flagship channel Star Plus and famous YouTuber Nisha Madhulika collaborated for its fiction offering Banni Chow Home Delivery, which started airing from 30 May 2022.

A household name in the Hindi general entertainment channel (HGEC) space, the channel has taken the initiative to integrate Banni Chow Home Delivery, a show which features an empowered self-made woman’s journey, with Nisha Madhulika’s YouTube channel, featuring ‘Banni’ and Nisha herself.

This show is aimed at showcasing the story of a young and vivacious entrepreneur, Banni, who runs a food delivery business where she cooks home-cooked meals for those who miss them. The character Banni is on a journey to becoming a self-made entrepreneur just like Nisha Madhulika.

This first-of-its-kind collaboration takes the ‘traditional meets new-age media’ to another level, and creates a harmony between both the digital and television audiences, unlocking a new media landscape.  

Nisha Madhulika has been featured in YouTube’s own spotlight campaigns and encourages each of her viewers, mostly housewives who are eager to learn new things on a digital platform. They aim to bring content in a meaningful manner, to the new set of audiences who straddle both digital and television, through this never-seen-before collaboration of YouTube and HGEC.

Nisha is a Uttar Pradesh (UP) based home chef who started her digital journey with a blog. She launched a YouTube channel with her recipes in 2011 eventually rising to become India’s #1 female YouTuber and 15th biggest YouTuber in India with a subscriber base of 13 million. The majority of her audiences are female with the highest viewership between ages 25-34 in Hindi-speaking markets.

According to an official statement from the channel, “This first-of-its-kind collaboration takes the ‘traditional meets new-age media’ to another level, and creates a harmony between both the digital and television audiences, unlocking a new media landscape.”

“The traditional linear TV has realised the potential of the creator economy in catering to a wider entertainment hungry audience who are spoilt for choice with a plethora of avenues at their disposal. The result is the wonderful amalgamation of the traditional TV and creator economy,” the statement added.

The initiative goes behind the usual format of short-term paid engagement to create a series of videos that bring out the synergies between the TV character (Banni) and a real-life YouTuber (Nisha Madhulika). This unique association will help Star Plus reach out to a wider audience and bridge the digital divide.

Nisha Madhulika said, “It is a sure-fire way to expand the reach of niche audiences to offer more value to both brands. It's about growing each other's communities to build a strong content ecosystem. Such associations for content makers and content creators like me can be a crucial link for brands to leverage to tap more viewers across geographies.”