JOHANNESBURG corporate executive Surie Ramasary grew up in humble beginnings in Chatsworth and Phoenix. Today, she is a leading executive in the world of mobile entertainment.
Ramasary founded an on-demand media platform company last year, which recently launched Avvatta, an OTT (over-the-top) platform that is expanding in Africa.
Avvatta was designed to give people easy access to content, which includes movies, series, music, children’s entertainment, e-learning and gaming.
Ramasary secured a partnership with ErosNow, which has India’s largest movie collection, they provide Bollywood content.
Their children’s content is aimed at 1- to 7-year-olds to help them develop skills and to allow them to be entertained and learn in a fun and interactive way.
The e-learning offering is grouped for ages 8-13 and 14-18, and it includes coding. It allows children to learn maths, science, geography, social skills and other subjects through creative visual content, engaging games and online worksheets.
The entertainment platform has a free content bouquet and flexible subscription models. It is now live in South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, with more launches scheduled for the African continent. Ramasary wants to give local creatives opportunities to have their content on Avvatta.
Ramasary, an executive with more than 20 years experience in consumer product design and content solutions, was born in Chatsworth.
She attended Astra Primary School in Chatsworth (Grades 1 and 2) before her family moved to Phoenix. Ramasary completed her schooling there.
“I came from humble beginnings. I moved to Johannesburg after matric and worked in a bank. Initially, I wanted to be a maths teacher. After the bank paid for my studies, I changed to a finance degree.”
Ramasary has a degree in marketing and finance. She also has an MBA in communications.
“I worked in the bank for nine-and-a-half years, and then in telecommunications. That’s where my career started to thrive because it’s something I really enjoy.”
After working for several years with leading mobile network companies across Africa, Ramasary said her experience, as well as seeing the growth of digital services during the Covid-19 pandemic, helped her realise that there was a need for affordable video-on-
demand services, engaging kids content and e-learning solutions.
After leaving the corporate industry in July last year, Ramasary started Digital Media 333 (DM333), a South African-based OTT entertainment on-
demand media platform.
The company then launched Avvatta in June this year. According to Ramasary, it is the newest, complete digital and mobile entertainment experience for Africa.
“Avvatta is a combination of letters from my daughters’ names – Vedanta, Siddhanta and Advaita, my baby who passed away after birth. My business partner on the technology side is
Prabhakar Manikonda. I designed the technical specifications, the user journeys and the front end look and feel, and licensed the content while Prabhakar developed the back end and front end systems as the Technology Director.”
Ramasary said they were also keen to build a higher load of quality local content.
“Our aim at Avvatta is to bring affordable entertainment to the mass market where access is limited today but at the same time giving them a premium experience. For example, every household has a mobile phone, she wants to democratize entertainment and learning by providing free entertainment and affordable access on the mobile phone to start connecting the unconnected.”
To this end, they have set up different packages. Avvatta Free Entertainment allows users to watch hours of content for free or they can subscribe to premium content from R2 a day.
“We are passionate about creating a platform where we can connect local producers to a global stage and introduce our local audience to a new world of entertainment. We would like to engage with local creators.”
All content proposals or requests can be submitted to [email protected].
Ramasary said Avvatta will be open to all South Africans to access for free from the 1st to the 15th December.
*Visit Avvatta here.