ITV

Tag: OTT streaming

  • Sony Pictures Networks taps Hitesh Sood to spearhead B2B partnerships

    Sony Pictures Networks taps Hitesh Sood to spearhead B2B partnerships

    MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Networks India (SPNI) has made a strategic move by appointing Hitesh Sood as vice president & head of B2B subscription and partnerships (digital business). Effective February 2025, Sood has already rolled up his sleeves to drive global expansion for Sonyliv and forge partnerships that will redefine digital content distribution.

    With a resume that reads like a thriller, Sood brings two decades of experience spanning telecom, media, and digital services. He has honed his expertise across continents, cracking tough negotiations and spearheading revenue-driven partnerships. From launching industry-first telco content bundles to scaling up OTT distribution, his track record is as impressive as a blockbuster’s opening weekend.

    In his new role, Sood will focus on taking Sonyliv beyond borders—literally. He aims to propel its reach to global audiences while working with telcos, banks, and content aggregators to make digital entertainment more engaging. With streaming services in an all-out war for eyeballs, this move signals Sony’s intent to stay ahead of the game.

    Before joining Sony, Sood made his mark at Renna Mobile, Grameenphone, Vodafone Idea, and Globacom, where he led marketing, partnerships, and product strategies. He played a key role in expanding digital content services and optimising customer engagement strategies. At Grameenphone, for instance, he quadrupled monthly active users (MAUs) in just two years—no small feat in a competitive streaming market.

    Sony Pictures Networks is banking on Sood’s knack for innovation to boost its B2B partnerships and subscriptions. With digital entertainment evolving at breakneck speed, Sony’s latest hire suggests the company is gearing up for a bigger, bolder future in the streaming industry.

  • MX Player signs five sponsors for Aashram 3

    MX Player signs five sponsors for Aashram 3

    Mumbai: MX Player has signed five sponsors for the third season of its most-watched web-series Aashram. The sponsors on board include Vimal Elaichi as ‘title sponsor’, Goldiee as ‘co-powered by’ sponsor, Kent Mineral RO, Royal Green and Crax have been onboarded as ‘special partners’.

    Aashram 3 is set to begin streaming on 3 June. As per the platform, the show was watched by 160 million unique users in its first season and the second season crossed 50 million views in 17 hours. The series has been consumed by more than 60 million users in the region of Maharashtra and Delhi NCR.

    “Aashram is one of our tentpole assets. It has created an immense impact on our users. As India’s largest digital video platform, we are incredibly humbled to see the response that Aashram has received since its launch, and now season three only promises to get bigger and better,” said MX Media chief operating officer Nikhil Gandhi.

    “It’s immense popularity and record-breaking views is a significant opportunity for brands to reach out to new audiences across Metro and non-metro users which is unique only to MX Player. We are very pleased with the clients who have grabbed this opportunity to associate with Aashram to get maximum impact of their investments.”

    Produced and directed by Prakash Jha, the MX original series by stars an ensemble cast comprising Bobby Deol, Aaditi Pohankar, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Darshan Kumaar, Anupriya Goenka, Esha Gupta, Sachin Shroff, Adhyayan Suman, Tridha Choudhury, Vikram Kochhar, Anuritta K Jha, Rushad Rana, Tanmaay Ranjan, Preeti Sood, Rajeev Siddhartha and Jaya Seal Ghosh.

  • Indian SVOD audience consumes content in more than four languages: Study

    Indian SVOD audience consumes content in more than four languages: Study

    Mumbai: The Indian subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) audience consumes content in 4.6 languages on an average, found a study by media consulting firm Ormax Media.

    The presence of widely available subtitling and dubbing options available on SVOD platforms makes it much easier for audiences to watch content outside their native language. The study found that for advertising video-on-demand services that outlook on language content is more conservative, primarily because of the low presence of multi-language dubbing on AVOD services, including YouTube.

    The study titled ‘Ormax OTT Audience Report: 2022’ is based on research conducted across more than 6,000 SVOD and SVOD audiences in urban India. As per the report’s estimates for the year 2021, India’s digital video audience universe stood at 353.2 million out of which 31 per cent were SVOD audience while the remaining 69 per cent were AVOD audience.

    As per Ormax’s findings, a large share of the audience of content in the four South Indian languages comes from outside their native state. For example, 88 per cent Malayalam content viewers are from outside Kerala, while 82 per cent Tamil content viewers are from outside Tamil Nadu.

    Dubbing has also fuelled the growth of English and other foreign language content, including Korean, according to the report. It found that 65 per cent SVOD audience and 43 per cent AVOD audience in urban India watch English language content, though a sizable section among them (more than half) prefer to watch it in an Indian language via dubbing.

    Average number of languages of content consumption among SVOD audience are higher in the Southern states, with Karnataka leading with an average of 5.7 languages. UP, Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh rank the lowest on this measure, at an average of less than four languages.

    “Streaming is a fast-growing category in India, and hence, it is important for content creators and marketers to constantly upgrade their understanding of the audiences, their taste, their viewing habits, and their viewing triggers,” said Ormax Media founder and CEO Shailesh Kapoor. “This report is a comprehensive update on how the behaviour and choices of Indian OTT audience have evolved over the course of the pandemic years, where there was unprecedented exposure to streaming content”.

    “A lot of AVOD content is being made in India today with an SVOD lens,” noted Kapoor. “However, this report reveals that the formats and genres preferred by SVOD and AVOD audiences are significantly different from each other. Since streaming has come up in India only recently in a big way, a lot of content greenlighting in the category has happened on instinct so far, without any robust consumer data to aid the decision-making process. The Ormax OTT Audience Report is our endeavour to help platforms make more informed content choices.”

  • Disney+ Hotstar’s Sunil Rayan moves on

    Disney+ Hotstar’s Sunil Rayan moves on

    Mumbai: Disney+ Hotstar India president and head Sunil Rayan has decided to move on from the company due to personal reasons, sources have confirmed to IndianaTelevision.com on Thursday. He will be associated with the company until the end of May. 

    Rayan oversaw Disney+ Hotstar’s overall business in India. He was responsible for driving scale, innovation and breadth of content.

    He joined Disney+ Hotstar India from Google where he worked for eight years, and last served as the GM and managing director, cloud for games. 

    Rayan has global experience – having scaled businesses in the US, setting up large teams in South East Asia, and working with super app players in Latin America. He has also worked with Infosys, iGATE Mastech, and IBM.

    He completed his bachelor of engineering in computer science from Madras University in 1996, after which he moved to the US in 1997. 

  • Disney+ Hotstar to premiere 11-episode prequel to hit show ‘Anupama’

    Disney+ Hotstar to premiere 11-episode prequel to hit show ‘Anupama’

    Mumbai: Streaming major Disney+ Hotstar has announced that it will release a 11-episode prelude to Star Plus’ hit television series “Anupama.”

    The forthcoming series will see actor Rupali Ganguly reprising her popular role in the digital space. Joining her will be on-screen husband played by Sudhanshu Pandey, as well as the entire cast from the series. The episodes of the prequel will be released over 11 days exclusively on the streaming service.

    “Experimenting with new formats is a norm at Disney+ Hotstar, and this vision has led to the genesis of a prequel of the audience’s favorite television show,” said head content Disney+ Hotstar and HSM entertainment network Gaurav Banerjee. “Following the response of our recent titles, and the avid fan following for Anupama, we took the opportunity to further deepen their connection with the character in an all-new format. We are confident that this exciting format will resonate well with India’s series-loving fandom and make the viewers fall in love with the character once again.”

    Launched in July 2020, “Anupama” has already aired over 500 episodes. A Hindi adaptation of the popular Bengali series “Sreemoyee”, the show is centered on the life of a Gujarati homemaker.

  • Know the story behind Netflix’s ‘skip intro’ button

    Know the story behind Netflix’s ‘skip intro’ button

    Mumbai: Streaming major Netflix, in a blog post, revealed that its ‘skip intro’ is pressed 136 million times in a typical day by its members. The platform claims that the feature has saved its members 195 years in cumulative time.

    The germ of the idea was conceived six years ago by the Netflix team. The intention was to help members get the most out of their experience on the platform, it said.

    “An idea was floated to add skip forward and skip backward buttons in 10-second increments,” stated Netflix director product innovation – studio product management Cameron Johnson. “The reason to offer a skip back 10 seconds was obvious: maybe you got distracted and missed a particular moment.”

    “But why skip forward 10 seconds?” Netflix asked themselves. “Well, you might want to skip the opening credits. But no one could come up with any other compelling reasons,” said Johnson.

    “At the same time, I was watching Game of Thrones, which has a famously long (and beautiful) opening credits sequence. I found the show so compelling that I wanted to skip the credits and jump right into the story, and I found it frustrating to try to manually jump forward to the just the right place. Sometimes I would jump too far, and sometimes I would jump too short. I wondered whether other people felt the same,” he added.

    Netflix research showed that 15 per cent of their members at the time were manually advancing the series within the first five minutes. “This gave us confidence that a lot of people wanted to skip the intro,” noted Johnson.

    Instead of building a general purpose solution that may help with several different needs, Netflix designed a single purpose solution that did one thing well.

    A little known hack unknown to many Netflix users is that they can press the ‘s’ key on the keyboard to trigger the ‘skip intro’ feature without having to move the mouse.

    “To find a name for the button, we brainstormed a few options including ‘Jump Past Credits,’ ‘Skip Credits,’ ‘Jump Ahead,’ ‘Skip Intro’ and simply ‘Skip’ and then started to test the feature with a random set of members,” recalled Johnson.

    Netflix initially tested the feature on the web across 250 series excluding films in the US and Canada. According to an engineer, “I’m not sure that if you put a button that said ‘free cupcake’ that it would get more clicks than ‘Skip Intro.’”

    “We quickly added ‘Skip Intro’ to TV in August 2017 and mobile in May of the following year. The rest is history,” said Johnson.

  • BBC Studios inks content deal with MX Player

    BBC Studios inks content deal with MX Player

    Mumbai: BBC Studios has announced a new content deal with MX Player on Thursday. As a part of this alliance, BBC’s award-winning British dramas will be available on MX Player catering to audiences in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives and Pakistan. 

    Popular titles such as “The Watch” and “Critical” will be available on the platform to strengthen its content portfolio, said the statement.

    “BBC Studios has a track record of attracting viewers with a discerning eye for premium content through its powerful storytelling that has the ability to resonate with a global audience,” said BBC Studios’ VP for distribution South Asia Stanley Fernandes. “We are glad to embark on this partnership with MX Player and together, I am confident we will bring our bold British content to more audiences within India and beyond.”

    “Our vision has always been to entertain India, the way India wants,” said MX Player SVP and head – content acquisitions and alliances Mansi Shrivastav. “Adding International shows to our library, dubbed in local Indian languages is our attempt at democratising content for our large and diverse audience base. We’re delighted to partner with BBC Studios that will see their compelling British narratives being added to our rich catalogue of shows and we look forward to expanding this slate further in the near future.”

  • Clean OTT to launch world’s first female-focused global streaming platform

    Clean OTT to launch world’s first female-focused global streaming platform

    Mumbai: Entertainment entrepreneur Karnesh Ssharma on Tuesday announced the launch of Clean OTT, the world’s only female oriented original-content streaming platform scheduled for the first quarter of 2023.

    India based Karnesh, who recently announced a $54 million content deal with Amazon Prime and Netflix for his production company Clean Slate Filmz, will set new benchmark in the Indian entertainment industry by providing a roster of cut-through content placing female actors, directors and producers at its heart and givingIndia, the world’s largest film export, a central role to play in challenging global gender stereotypes, said the statement.

    Clean OTT will be driven by an annual subscription SVOD model and will initially launch in India before expanding to markets such as the UK, USA, Canada, and the UAE – all of which celebrate a significant diaspora community. The content, though frequently localised in its production, is strategically chosen to have a resonance with worldwide audiences,demonstrating the popularity of local stories internationally and how such narratives are transient in nature, it added.

    “i have always believed in the power of storytelling to move hearts and minds and I am conscious of the responsibility that entertainment platforms have in producing and promoting stories that do not endorse bias,” said Karnesh Ssharma. “For centuries patriarchy has governed storytelling, and as a man, I have always felt men play an equal part in shifting the narrative, conversation, and power shifts. When the voices of women are heard it teaches us new perspectives which, as an audience and filmmaker, are just as compelling and interesting.”

    Speaking about the importance of market segmentation for its content strategy, Karnesh added, “We believe there is a unique opportunity to expand content. For example, women make up 50% of viewership in India yet most of the content is male focused or represents women in a secondary fashion. We are confident the Clean OTT narratives will appeal to everyone as we provide a platform free of prejudice. This will give women a voice that can be enjoyed by any demographic around the world and for those who are part of our productions, a path for career progression.”

    The Clean OTT content will comprise international and regional projects across films, web series, and docu-series. The company will include originally curated and produced works by Clean and pre-selected projects that meet the Clean OTT messaging framework by other producers from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. The library will showcase the credentials of an experienced team of directors, scriptwriters, actors, and producers associated with Clean Slate Filmz, as well as giving rise to emerging talent, the statement said.

    Clean OTT will be available across web platforms, mobile apps, subscription platforms and other content aggregators around the world.

  • hoichoi premieres ABP Studios’ ‘Mukhyamantri’

    hoichoi premieres ABP Studios’ ‘Mukhyamantri’

    Mumbai: ABP Studios’ produced docu-series “Mukhyamantri” premiered on Bengali on-demand video streaming platform hoichoi on 25 February.

    The docu-series is directed by the famous Bengali director – Indranil Roychowdhury and is presented by Pratik Dutta and Shaoli Chattopadhyay.

    Through this docu-series, ABP Studios aims at introducing the layman to the effervescent landscape of Bengal politics. It’s a way of analysing Bengal’s modern political history through the eyes of the state’s eight chief ministers.

    Indranil Roychowdhury has produced and directed multiple award-winning films over a period of 25 years of his career. His renowned production company Flipbook produced Indranil’s first full-length feature film Phoring in the year 2013. Moreover, his noteworthy work includes – ‘Tapanbabu’, ‘Ekti Bangali Bhooter Goppo,’ ‘Bhalobashar Shohor’ and ‘The Lovely Mrs Mukherjee.’

    “We are thrilled to have forayed into Bengal with our very first docu-series,” said ABP Studios business head Zulfia Waris. “It’s a never-before-told story about the history of West Bengal told through the tenures of each of its illustrious chief ministers. We are committed to use our rich 100-year-old archive of stories not just nationally but internationally as well. ‘Mukhyamantri’ marks the first of many shows that ABP Studios will produce in the future that have its roots in the state.”

    ABP Studios is collaborating with emerging national and international talent, as well as National Award-winning writers and filmmakers, to realize their larger aim of bringing local stories to a worldwide audience. They are also excited about developing and presenting content from its recent acquisitions in adventure, horror, and crime drama genres.