EXCLUSIVE: Nuefliks APP paid Akamai Rs 1.5 core annually for CDN hosting services

MUMBAI: The Mumbai Crime Branch investigation into the working and finances of the Indian pornographic APP Nuefliks has found that the California-registered company owned by Arvind Kumar Srivastav aka Yash Thakur and his partners, paid Akamai – the world leader in content distribution and delivery solutions, a whooping Rs 1.5 crore annually for their hosting, bandwidth and CDN services.

While Srivastav is the main owner and ran the business, he had to rope in US citizens to get the company registered in California.

These “local” partners or shareholders only lent their names as director/s to enable company registration in California and were not involved in the business of the company.

However, they took nearly 25 per cent of the profits of the company as their names and documents were involved.

Nuefliks also paid software and APP developers Rs 35 to 50 lakh per year to maintain the Nuefliks app and make improvements, modifications and other changes to it.

In addition, the company spent about Rs 70 to Rs 120 lakhs on procurement of porn content – films and clips, which were outsourced to various producers across India.

Depending on the artistes and models or porn stars involved as well as shoot locations, the producers or makers were paid Rs 2.5 to Rs 5 lakh per clip or short film, whistle-blower Sagarika Shona Suman has said.

Nuefliks has nearly 130 producers across India, including MP, West Bengal and cities like Bhopal, Mumbai, Thane, Surat, Kolkata and others.

One model Cherlyne Martins told this reporter that Nuefliks had a producer based in Goa as well.

The operating cost of Nuefliks was in the range of Rs 6 to 8 crore annually, while the revenue generated through subscriptions was in the range of Rs 15 to 18 crore. Which means Yash Thakur and his partners were making Rs 10 crore each year in profits through the porn business.

At the peak point in its operations between July to October 2020, Nuefliks had about 5 lakh subscribers.

A rival app HotHits launched by Mumbai-based Rowa aka Yasmin Khan and her husband Dipankar Khasnavis aka Shaan Banerjee – a former Bollywood photographer, in mid 2020 heavily ate into Nuefliks’ bottom-line, as it offered hardcore Indian porn for as little as 199 per month.

In November and December 2020, Nuefliks lost nearly 50,000 low-budget subscribers to Hothits and sparked a fierce competition or war between the Indian OTT porn players.

Yash Thakur then began toying with the idea of offering 360 degree VR (virtual reality) soft porn and erotica content to lap up high-paying classy subscribers. He wanted to get out of the hardcore porn business as he considered it down market and not classy.

His production team based in Surat was instructed to start working on 360 degree VR soft porn or erotic films and understand the technology and editing techniques involved.

However, before this could happen, the team was busted and team leader Tanvir Hashmi aka Tan was arrested by the Crime Branch, along with 8 others including Raj Kundra’s PA Umesh Kamat and actor Gehana Vasisth in February this year.