Outside the small villages of Haryana, India, a curious thing is happening. Farmers’ houses within hamlets around the industrial town of Rohtak are becoming sought-after movie sets, thanks to a mushrooming local film industry. Amidst mooing cows, you can hear “lights, camera, action” from irate directors as productions take shape.

STAGE: Pathfinder Haryanvi Cinema

At the head of this charge is a start-up called STAGE, which has evolved quickly to work to establish a local film industry. ‘We have produced more than 200 films since inception in 2019, of which more than a dozen Haryanvi films were made in the entire history before we arrived,” says Vinay Singhal, founder of STAGE. Their latest one, Batta, is a high-octane drama about power and injustice.

Local Content Appetite

STAGE focuses on creating content that fulfills the regional flavor, specifically on dialects and cultural essence. With 19,500 dialects, STAGE has finally targeted 18 dialects that enjoyed mass appeal to develop adequate viewership support for their film industries. ‘The platform has gained content in Rajasthani and Haryanvi, enjoying three million paying subscribers. Dialects like Maithili and Konkani are in the making soon.

A Booming Rural Market Opportunity

The rise of STAGE is part of a broader trend as Indian start-ups realize that rural markets hold immense potential. ‘Traditionally, tech start-ups primarily focus on the urban elite and have overshot India’s villages. This is a significant growth opportunity, with over 1.4 billion people in nearly 650,000 villages.

Accel Ventures, one of the most noted investors in Indian start-ups, has also started focusing on rural opportunities and announced some investments catering to tier 2 and 3 cities. Suzuki’s new $40 million fund for specific investment in rural start-ups is a testimony to this shift, to say the least.

Rural Consumer Orientation

As the demand for rural commodities increases, investors learn that being rural doesn’t come with poverty tags attached. Two-thirds of the Indian population lives in the countryside, spending $500 billion annually. ‘Still, more than half of what their urban counterparts spend is spent by the top 20% of this demographic.

Another reason to believe that smartphone penetration will drive growth in this particular shift is that more than 450 million Indians have smartphones, which makes up the total population of the United States.

Challenges of Reaching the Rural Consumers

Despite their vast potential, rural start-ups still have much to overcome. Consumers in such areas are usually quite price-sensitive and dispersed over vast geographical tracks that complicate their distribution. Infrastructure in rural areas is also lagging, thereby raising operational costs.

Traditional e-commerce models find it difficult to enter such markets without local trust. According to Gautam Malik, chief revenue officer of rural e-commerce start-up Frontier Markets, the answer lies in partnering with the local entrepreneur. “The company collaborates with village-level women entrepreneurs to take sales and deliveries. ‘In this process, local trust is developed for transactions to succeed,” he says.

Conclusion: A New Era for Rural India

This film industry in India is booming majestically in rural areas, and start-ups such as STAGE are giving way to further innovation; in this sense, rural entrepreneurship is slowly but surely changing. These companies are not only thriving but also providing a new narrative about the potential of rural India, which takes advantage of local culture, dialects, and community connections.

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