Who is bolder and hotter on OTT? Jayashree Gaikwad, Aayushi Jaiswal, Ishika Borah, Priya Soni, Nandita Dutta or?

MUMBAI: With the explosion in the OTT space, hundreds of female actors have begun ruling the waves and also making some decent money in the bargain. While names like Ishika Borah have been floating around for over a decade now, others like Jayashree Gaikwad and Aayushi Jaiswal are comparatively new.

Ishika Borah as readers may recall, first shot to fame with her nude and topless magazine covers and centrespreads for men’s magazines like Debonair and Chastity during 2007-12. Those were the days when mobile phones were keypad driven with small B&W screens and almost no graphics capability at all. The mobile Internet was at the 2G level and only text-based mobile pages (or WAP pages) could be rendered on mobile phones. Magazines, glossies and periodicals ruled even the glamour world and men hid girlie magazines in their closets and office bags. Ishika Borah was one of the more sought-after pin-up girls during that time and was doing photo shoots almost everyday for various men’s magazines in the country.

But the advent of smartphones like the iPhone and other android devices changed things forever. Print magazines were gone and replaced by apps. And this time around names like Aayushi Jaiswal, Jayashree Gaikwad, Nandita Dutta and Priya Soni are ruling the men’s private entertainment plane.

But that’s not all. More and more bolder actors keep coming up as the industry grows. The entire OTT or digital entertainment industry in India is about Rs 5000 crore annually and the bold or adult space takes up more than 50 percent of this business pie which works out to Rs 2500 crore.

With this kind of budget and money, hundreds, if not thousands of women compete with each other for viewers and eyeballs. While names like Aayushi Jaiswal, Jayashree Gaikwad, Nandita Dutta, Zoya Rathore and several others, not to forget the still ruling Ishika Borah are known and seen around on social media, let’s not forget it’s the hundreds of unknown female actors who make up nearly 90 percent of the Rs 2500 crore market in India and are as popular as the above names in their individual regional fiefdoms or kingdoms.