“I personally feel we have slowly moved towards an era wherein the audience has started understanding that content doesn’t have any particular language,” filmmaker Akshay Bardapurkar tells journalist-author Harshita Dagha as he explains the overwhelming love for Marathi the audience shows while he launches India’s first Marathi OTT service, Planet Marathi.

Planet Marathi—The Entity 

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With the pandemic and the lockdown, people are turning to OTT platforms like never before. So, Akshay Bardapurkar, fresh from the success of AB Ani CD hopped on this venture. Established some time ago by Akshay Bardapurkar, Planet Marathi comes with a vision of creating a niche for Marathi films, culture and art across the world map.

Bardapurkar’s thought of packaging rich aesthetics and content of Marathi entertainment and arts led to the creation of this contemporary, exclusive and unique platform.

This is India’s first-ever Marathi platform

This is an innovative venture, that is undeniable. There have been other regional services available for some time, such as Aha for the Telugu language and Hoichoi for the Bengali language. Therefore, it was only time something like Planet Marathi had to appear on the scene. Bardapurkar’s vision with this platform in his own words, “My vision has always been to take Marathi global and vice-versa. We began by being a simple digital platform, knowing very well that we will have to curate good content and showcase it to the world which we did by doing three movies back-to-back and will do many more in future.”

Stop Signs Ahead?

He recognised some of the setbacks that would come his way and carefully added, “But the fact that there was a huge void which we wanted to fill and that was there was no platform which was only meant for Marathi content which can host everything from art, music, films and web series.” This was not a brand-new project and Bardapurkar says, “I had envisioned it three years back and I am very happy today that we could achieve this in less than three years wherein we not only creating and promoting Marathi content but we now have a place where we can showcase the same which unfortunately wasn’t possible yet.”

His thoughts: Behind-the-scene

This is a genuine passion project for both Bardapurkar and his partner, actor, Pushkar Shrotri, and music composer, Aditya Oke. Bardapurkar concludes, “It was a common thought of coming together towards a common agenda that is to create and promote Marathi. We all come from different streams of the entertainment world and to merge each other’s expertise and come together was very easy, the common agenda is to take Marathi global.”

Aditya Oke adds to this, “Planet Marathi honours the language, culture, and the spirit of Marathi! It gives us great honour to represent India’s one and only Marathi OTT.”

This is a big step towards a future when everyone, Marathi speakers and non-Marathi speakers can all come together to enjoy the content.