Hoichoi has 13 million subscribers, the Bengali-language streaming service said on Friday. This is the first time the company has revealed a subscriber count for its service, three years after launching. While Hoichoi didn’t disclose how many of these viewers are direct subscribers, it is interesting to note that 40% of the company’s revenue comes from abroad, a notable figure for a regional-language platform. We spoke to co-founder Vishnu Mohta on what the platform has learnt, and generally on the Indian streaming service ecosystem. A transcript of that interview, edited for clarity and length, follows.

MediaNama: What have you learnt in the three years since Hoichoi’s launch?

Vishnu Mohta: This business is a mix of four or five things. This is something we realized early on, but we never realized the interplay of all of these things, which is the interplay of content, technology, great customer support, marketing, and distribution, working with partners. So the interplay of all of these things to work together to achieve your objective is extremely important. In most businesses there are two or three things that you’re aiming at. In the content business, you’re trying to do content and distribution, generally.

I have always believed that content is king, but in this business, you need content coupled with the technology coupled with customer support.