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Tag: CASBAA OTT Summit

  • Netflix viewing is 6% of Hotstar’s in India: 21st CF CFO Nallen

    NEW DELHI: Star India’s parent 21st Century Fox feels that Star’s OTT platform Hotstar future in the Indian market was great and that it has become the `second TV’ in Indian homes that highlights global competitors like Netflix and Amazon have failed to make a dent yet.

    According to 21st Century Fox senior EVP and CFO John Nallen, the portable nature of the app (Hotstar on a smart phone) has made people use it as a “second TV”. Similarity of content on traditional TV on Star channels (“we produce 17,000 hours per year of local Indian product”) is what drives the market, ratings and minutes on Hotstar, he added.

    Speaking to investors in March 2017, Nallen pointed out that there have been 135 million downloads — “the biggest app download in Indian history”– of Hotstar app and in terms of usage in January 2017, it had eight billion minutes of viewing, “ten times of what it had six months earlier”.

    “When I look at the growth of our business, Hotstar is a key piece of it in India, and it also had the opportunity to appeal to the Indian diaspora where we sell our products currently in the US and the UK,” the 21st CF CFO highlighted.  At 21st Century Fox, Nallen oversees all of the company’s financial dealings, specifically overseeing capital market and merger and acquisition transactions as well as various corporate-wide operating initiatives.

    Asked if Amazon and Netflix impacted the OTT market in India as both were investing heavily, Nallen said, “Netflix, not really. It is six per cent of Hotstar viewing (in India). Amazon is investing significantly in local products, which is in Hindi and local languages.”

    According to an official statement from Star earlier this month, Hotstar became the first local service to cross 100 million downloads on the Google Play Store, racing ahead of many other consumer Internet companies in India, including e-commerce services like Amazon India and Flipkart, taxi ride services like Ola, payment apps like Paytm and even news services like Times of India, NDTV and Dailyhunt.

    The service also announced recently that it has emerged as the primary screen for cricket extravaganza VIVO IPL 2017 in India’s top cities, especially those with more than a million in population.

    Speaking at the CASBAA OTT Summit in Singapore in March, Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan, without elaborating on exact plans, had asserted the platform wanted to expand to other parts of the globe, adding the model could be “global with mobile viewing and tech at the heart of things.”  He did not expand on the territories being targeted for expansion or the investments being made by the company.

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  • Hotstar plans to enter other markets

    MUMBAI: Much is in store for Over-the-top (OTT) content aggregator platform Hotstar. A game-changer in the industry which managed to generate 175 million downloads in two years now plans to expand to other parts of the globe.

    Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan has announced new territory launches. Speaking to Mumbrella Asia at the CASBAA OTT Summit in Singapore, he said, “The model can be global with mobile viewing and tech at the heart of things.”

    Though, he did now reveal how much investments had gone into the company or which countries were being looked at as the next markets in the global expansion plan. “We will look at other models too,” he said. “It may be that some of our customers want to pay to receive no ads whatsoever. And where we do run ads, we try to ensure they are personalised and not disruptive. So, for example, with the cricket the ads run during the break between overs.”

    Despite the high cost, he revealed that the app received 60 million active users last month due to its mix of national and international content. “It was a big bet for us to bring all the content together in one place, but that is what the consumer wants. India was ready for it but nobody had invested to connect up the dots before,” he added.

    He also said that the cricket test match between India and England has received as many as three million people using Hotstar at one time.

    Mohan also asserted that the company is seeing rapid growth on a dramatic scale. “Something big is happening in India. That’s clear in the numbers. It’s an exciting story for curated high-quality content and we now have massive brand equity. So we do see an opportunity to take Hotstar to other markets.”

    It will be interesting to see what card the company pulls out next.