PlayVerse’s pre-school animation series “Penelope” gets over 11M views, crosses 75K subscriptions across regional languages in 4 months
- The Hindi version of Penelope had the maximum number of subscribers followed by the Bengali version
- The edutainment value of Penelope helps parents to create a learning experience for their children as they stay out of playgrounds and preschools
- The localized version of the animation series helps parents to introduce their kids to international quality educational content in their native language
- Penelope’s English version to be launched in 2022
PlayVerse, a licensing and entertainment company that had recently launched its animation IP, Penelope, announced crossing the 75K subscribers mark and 11M views within just 4 months of the launch. Available in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bangla, Penelope is an extremely popular French Book Series that has sold 3M+ copies so far and it has then been licensed by Nippon Animation, Japan to launch a full-fledged animation series across the world. As per data, the Bengali version saw the maximum number of subscribers followed by the Hindi and Telugu version. Parents between the ages of 25-34 subscribed to Penelope, the most with subscribers from Karnataka holding the maximum percentage of return viewers. The regional focus of Penelope is to further solidify the company’s vision of striving to bring the best of Japanese animation and make it more interactive with the power of storytelling for Indian consumers across age segments. Penelope is currently available on YouTube as PlayVerse continues to explore regional TV channels and OTT partners to license the content.
Parents of young kids look to depend upon animation series which can help in building social skills and instill confidence in children. The 3-year-old active and cheerful Koala girl is an endearing character allowing kids to identify with Penelope and learn through her experiences. The edutainment value of the animation series and the portrayal of Penelope’s realistic optimism in localized versions is making the series a favourite amongst parents in the regional markets.
According to the FICCI-EY media and entertainment industry report (March 2021), regional languages will make up 60% of television consumption by 2025. Localizing content has been a way forward for the industry as it helps in widening the reach of the audience and helps in building a personalized experience for the viewer. With Penelope, available in 5 languages across India, it is becoming a medium for parents to introduce children to their native language and create a cultural environment for them.
PlayVerse founder, Jaineel Aga on Penelope reaching 75,000+ subscribers within 4 months said, “Penelope’s realistic optimism, playfulness, curiosity and willingness to learn makes her the perfect character to narrate stories to children. We wanted to reach out to the regional audience and provide children with an opportunity to view content in their native language. We are very happy to see a positive response from the audience for Penelope in such a short span of time especially with so many competitors. Building on the success of regional languages, we will soon be launching the English channel of Penelope as well.”
Penelope was conceived by Anne Gutman and Georg Hallensleben as an extremely popular French Book Series which has sold 3M+ copies so far. It has then been licensed by Nippon Animation, Japan to launch a full-fledged animation series across the world. Penelope has been published in 11 countries and the animation IP is broadcasted in 19 countries worldwide spanning 4 seasons/ 80 episodes.
