‘Ayyana Mane’, an ambitious web series

Producer Shruthi Naidu talks about her lush murder mystery, set for release on OTT next Friday

The Khushee Ravi-starrer ‘Ayyana Mane’, Zee5’s first original Kannada webseries will be released on April 25. It is written and directed by Ramesh Indira and boasts a fine set of actors — Archana Kottige, Hitha Chandrashekar, Anirudh Acharya and Vijay Shobraj. 

‘Ayyana Mane’ is a supernatural murder mystery set in a small village in coastal Karnataka.

“The story takes place in a house, it’s about the people in the house, the mystery and the daiva. Every character in the house has a distinct characterisation. There is a story and a mystery behind every character,” its producer Shruthi Naidu tells Showtime. Shruthi has produced many popular television serials.

‘Ayyana Mane’ is also the first Kannada web series backed by a streaming platform. 

Earlier, Sakkath Studios’ RJ Pradeep had attempted a bunch of series including ‘Loose Connection’ and ‘Honeymoon’. ‘Honeymoon’ was produced by Nivedita Shivarajkumar. 

The production of ‘Ayyana Mane’ began in December when Zee5 approached Shruthi with an interest in producing a web series in Kannada. 

Shruthi and Ramesh Indira had earlier joined hands for the feature film ‘Premiere Padmini’ featuring Jaggesh in the lead role. 

Shruthi has been producing Kannada television serials for about two decades. “After ‘Premiere Padmini’ and the Covid-19 pandemic, I could not continue with movie productions. The market is also quite tricky — it’s a dicey situation and I didn’t have the courage to invest there. Zee5’s call was a welcome change,” she says. 

She says budget constraints were one of the biggest challenges. “Web series come in between TV serials and movies. We cannot spend the same amount we spend on a movie, on webseries,” she shares.

“Zee5 also had a limited budget, because it’s a first attempt in Kannada,” she explains. 

She says they worked hard on the editing to get a crisp cut with a cliffhanger at the end of every episode. They had seven episodes which was then further cut. It now stands at six episodes and is ready for release.  

Being the first OTT-backed project in Kannada, Shruthi says she wanted to make the most of the opportunity. “We made sure to have a technically sound team so we’re at par with other industries,” she adds. 

Shruthi hopes the audience can further spread a word about the series. “We’re putting in maximum efforts to market it but word-of-mouth has its own charm,” she says, adding, “The success of this show has the potential for bigger challenges — we’ll be able to produce more such series, artistes here will get work.”