A joint venture between the US entertainment giant Viacom and India’s media conglomerate Network18, Viacom18 owns some of India’s most popular reality and fiction shows. It has also developed original content for each region it operators under the Colors brand. It already operates GECs in the Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Odia and Bangla markets of India.

“Driving regional aggressively is one of our foremost strategic thrusts. Given that almost 60% of our country speaks in regional languages and this market is under-indexed on television, it is imperative that this segment will continue to grow rapidly in the years ahead,” said Sudhanshu Vats (pictured), group CEO, Viacom18.

In July 2016, the network launched a second, sister channel to Colors for the Kannada market with Colors Super.

“While Colors Super was aimed at deepening our presence in the Kannada genre where Colors Kannada is an undisputed leader, the launch of Colors Tamil is a step towards widening our reach in regional markets by entering the largest regional market in the country. The Tamil content market is highly competitive and well-primed for disruption, making this the opportune time for our entry,” added Vats."We look forward to delighting the Tamil content aficionado with the latest offering from the house of Viacom18.”