This month PONGALO, a diversified Latino-focused digital media company, will launch its new streaming service which will offer a diverse amount of Latino content from telenovelas to Hollywood blockbusters.

Jorge Granier, CEO of Pongalo and Executive Producer of the hit comedy "Jane the Virgin," worked on developing the streaming service to create a place for Latinos to view some of the most popular content.

Latin Post had the opportunity to speak with Granier about the streaming service, its future and how he believes it will develop in the competitive streaming service market.

Latin Post: Can you tell me a little about the streaming service that will be out?

Jorge Granier: We are launching Pongalo. We did an alpha launch over the last year and it was just telenovelas. This new revamp of Pongalo is a full service for Latino and Spanish speakers all over the world. Its 100 percent in Spanish and we have a great selection of content. The service is a subscription service, you can download the app and watch it online and we have some content that is available for free. You start watching it and then if you want to get the full experience HD and everything, it is a $5.99 monthly subscription in the U.S.

LP: Tell me about the content that the service will offer?

JG: We are launching with 10,000 hours but we are adding content every week. We have telenovelas, some of the greatest hits of telenovelas of all time such as "Cassandra." That was the telenovela in the world guinness record for being sold in the most countries. We have series and super series so things like "El Cartel de los Sapos," which launched the narco novela and have a huge selection of movies from Latin America both theatrical, studio, and independent. We have a huge selection of Mexican movies and also did a partnership with Revolution studios and Morgan Creek. So we have a number of big Hollywood films in Spanish as well. So things like "Black Hawk Down," "Maid in Manhattan" with JLO and "XXX." We also have a children's classic section where we have telenovelas from Latin America that are children oriented, series and some animated stuff. We have a documentary section that we are adding a lot of content to and then we have a new section where we have daily shows which will be added on a daily basis. We are soon going to be launching a sports section. We're very excited to offer some really cool sports for Spanish speakers.

LP: How is the company choosing the content?

JG: We looked at what the market has and what it needed. And there was definitely some room for a Spanish language service that cast a wider net and gave us Spanish speakers a place to watch all the content that we are used to watching either at home or in our home country. We focused a lot on telenovelas, series, movies and then we have other verticals. The focus has been to get solid titles throughout all our history. So what was the biggest telenovela in the 80s and 90s and how has that genre evolved throughout. And then movies that are relevant to us and actors and actresses that are relevant to us. That is how we are selecting.

LP: Is Pongalo going to focus on original content like Netflix and Amazon have been doing?

JG: Yes, we are launching a new telenovela which is exclusive to us called "Piel Salvaje." That was produced by Radio Caracas Television and we will be launching another one in November. So we will have a lot of exclusive content on the service. So next year we will be developing and producing more stuff and as you know I produced "Jane the Virgin." And I am in various stages with numerous projects. The idea is to create new and original productions in Spanish for the Spanish speaking audience here in the U.S.

LP: Tell me about how you are planning on engaging the millennial community since it is one of the biggest consumers of entertainment in the U.S?

JG: One of the things that differentiate us from anything else out there is the way we built this business was first we got the content and through that content we started building distribution partnerships. We distribute to Amazon, Hulu, Netflix and Google and that Goolge relationship into a large user audience where we have an audience of more than 10 million subscribers and more than 100 million views per month and that's with content that some of our affiliates are creating and some of our own are creating for the platform for Youtube and then some of our telenovelas that we have out there. So we have a very big social media presence where we plan to do a lot of our outreach there for millennials and we're seeing that us millennials are interested in good storytelling and that just ends the genre divide. So that could be a movie, a series or a telenovela and our numbers and data show that we are resonating there. In Mexico we have done really well and in the U.S it's probably our fastest growing market for our youtube presence. All of that informed our decision to create Pongalo.

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