A good start for this Telugu OTT

Telugu Ott platform Aha, launched in February 2020, was all set to make its presence felt in the market with a grand launch party in March commemorating Ugadi, but the pandemic played spoilsport to all their plans. However, the lockdown had something better in store for them and turned out to be a blessing in disguise, from where they grew from strength to strength with an impressive lineup of shows, movies, originals and short films. Now, they've completed one year in the Ott space tasting much success.

Mastis, Kotha Poradu were among the initial shows that the platform earned a name with and they managed to stay consistently in the news with their film acquisitions, originals. Some of the other shows that helped the platform include Locked, Sin, Commitmental. Bringing in a talk show through Suma and introducing Samantha as a host in an interview series Sam Jam (supervised by Nandini Reddy), they took several innovative moves to grab the attention of audiences.

Among their many surprising decisions during the pandemic, noticing the demand for Malayalam content in the Telugu land, they dubbed a slew of films from Mollywood including Moothoon, Virus, Jallikattu, Trance to name a few. There were a host of Tamil-dubbed films too including 36 Vayasulo, Maguvalaku Mathrame, Bangaru Thalli, Narinja Mithai. Some of the big-ticket Ott releases that kept them in the news include Arjun Suravaram, Khaidi, Colour Photo, Dirty Hari, Orey Bujjiga and Krack. Their recent releases Mail and Super Over too were lauded for their innovative content.

Harish Shankar, Venu Udugula, Praveen Sattaru are among a few names whose content will be seen on Aha soon. Unlike Amazon Prime and Netflix that focused on big budgeted films and shows, Aha turned out to be a boon for small-time filmmakers looking to put out their content, though quality is something they need to work on in the long run.