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EXCLUSIVE: Ekta Kapoor on ALTBalaji: People expected me to fail but I was back in the game
Ekta Kapoor, in an exclusive chat with Pinkvilla, opened up on feeling like a newcomer when started her digital platform ALTBalaji, and the criticism she received.
Ekta Kapoor today is not just a TV czarina, she pretty well dominates the digital and cinema space as well. Kapoor has always managed to take risks and her success story continues to be an inspiration for many others. Ekta was 17 when she started her office from a garage in her bungalow and since then, she has not looked back. Slowly but steadily she forayed from TV, into films and Alt Balaji today has become a success story for homegrown original content. Even as Ekta manages to strike a balance between the content that she produces, Alt received a fair amount of criticism for its sexual content as well. ALTBalaji today turns 3. Ekta, in an exclusive chat with Pinkvilla, opened up on feeling like a newcomer when started her digital platform and the criticism she received.
"I was so scared because everyone told me you don't have catch-up content queen, koi Indian TV shows nahi hai, you don't have any international content, you don't have a brand name like Netflix or Amazon. You are an Indian app and anyway, people will think you will make saas-bahu shows," Ekta reminiscence and added, "I made Gandi Baat and someone told me it is such a progressive show. I was trying to do just that... I was trying to get stories that were slightly edgy in small-town India. Of course, it was sexual, I had no problem with that but it was far more progressive than anything else I had done. There were stories about women who had discovered their sexuality."
She further revealed the high she felt when she proved everyone wrong. "As I said, everyone thought it won't work and when the app started working, people were shocked. An original content platform has never worked before, internationally or otherwise. Even for Netflix, it had to get international TV shows on its platform, even Amazon, it was an amazing collaboration of e-commerce and content. But Alt was an individual concept. Everyone said what are you doing? but, I wanted to do it because I felt like the girl from the garage who started her career then. Everyone else was a big daddy and I was a newcomer and I can't tell you how good I felt. I was tired of people expecting me to succeed or rather were expecting me to fail but I was back in the game."
Check out full interview of Ekta Kapoor's below:
About the criticism she received for sexual content, Ekta emphasized, "When we made the Test Case, people were not able to understand because it was before the times we had a female Defence Minister, we had this show on women in combative forces. We did many such shows but, of course, sexual content becomes a problem, sex becomes a problem. People who are so liberal in their thinking and have this problem with sex is an oxymoron in itself. I mean you should have a problem with non-consensual sex."
She concluded, "I have had lines removed from the script. There are 4 girls who sit on the script. I tell them sex is not a problem, but if there is anything misogynist, I don't want that."
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