MUMBAI: Pandu is a Marathi comedy web-series on the everyday life of Mumbai Police starring Suhas Sirsat, Deepak Shirke, Abish Mathew and Trupti Khamkar. A session at The Content Hub 2020 Day 2 organised by Indiantelevision.com was a case study on Pandu by the creators of the Marathi series.
Gulbadan Talkies founder and creative director Sarang Sathaye and co-founder and director Anusha Nandakumar briefed the audience on the establishment of Bharatiya Digital Party (BDP).
Sathaye said, “We wanted to have our own voice on the digital space in a long format series. We started with the idea of making our own digital platform, so we started to make Marathi digital content in BDP four years back."
Speaking on life before the making of Pandu, Sathaye briefed the audience on the struggle they went through in creating what they actually wanted to create. He said, “Despite having numbers on our site we were struggling to mark ourselves as a creator that can create long format content too.”
Nandakumar said, “Lots of Maharashtrian youth were not watching Marathi content because they were not able to connect with the shows. So, we felt the need to create Marathi content that connects well with viewers. Pandu is a typical Maharashtrian comedy series and we are happy that MX Player supported us. The show is about what happens to Singham when he goes home.”
Sathaye believes comedy lies in our regular conversation. “For us Pandu is made of all our day-to-day unique moments. Every episode is theme based," he said.
He further said, “There was hardly any platform that was backing regional content and MX Player truly supported us with Pandu. Makers should look at regional content and make Marathi content to that extent that one day people will wake-up to watch Marathi content in the US like we watch Game of Thrones here.”
The creators also spoke on challenges they faced in hiring talent for the show and selling the content to the OTT platform.