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Tag: OTT

  • In a first, BookMyShow Stream rolls out TV series on-demand

    In a first, BookMyShow Stream rolls out TV series on-demand

    Mumbai: Big Tree Entertainment-owned transaction video-on-demand (TVOD) service BookMyShow Stream has announced the launch of TV series on the platform. With this, BookMyShow Stream will become the first TVOD platform in India to introduce on-demand TV series to audiences.

    The newly-launched TV series catalogue will feature exclusive titles and mini-series. Curated from across genres and languages (English, Spanish, French, German and others) the slate will also include the platform’s owned content under the BookMyShow Stream originals banner. The service premieres with the Danish-Swedish mini-series “The Investigation” on 17 December. 

    BookMyShow Stream will be offering users the option to either rent a TV series of their choice for a finite duration or buy it for unlimited access. “The Investigation” will be followed by a slew of titles being released every fortnight over the next few months. These will include “The Trip Franchise” (English), “Miramar Murders” (Spanish), “The Sketch Artist” (French), “The Sister” (English), “Hard Sun” (English), “The Witnesses” (German), “Dark Woods” (German), and “Dalgleish” (English). Most of these titles will be available under BMS originals.

    “BookMyShow Stream has been extremely well received across age groups and languages. We are thrilled to offer cinephiles an enhanced experience with the launch of yet another content format on the platform,” said BookMyShow COO – cinemas Ashish Saksena. “With a multitude of genres and titles that span languages across the world, cinephiles can now access exclusive TV series and content titles every fortnight along with the rich ‘BookMyShow Stream Originals’ repertoire.”

  • GUEST COLUMN: How to combat streaming piracy with OTT’s broken protocol?

    GUEST COLUMN: How to combat streaming piracy with OTT’s broken protocol?

    Mumbai: With vast sums of money to be made, it’s not surprising that streaming pirates are continually upping their game to keep their highly profitable illegal businesses afloat.  A recent global study conducted by Ampere Analysis for Synamedia found that sports streaming piracy alone is worth over $28 billion and the Global Innovation Policy Centre places the global TV industry’s losses from digital piracy between $39.3 to $95.4 billion per year.

    From Bollywood and Hollywood blockbusters to LIVE sports including IPL and women’s football, streaming piracy has reached an industrial scale in India. Within minutes of release, stolen content is circulated, exchanged and sold on open internet sites and social media platforms, such as Telegram and WhatsApp, as well as on closed subscription-based pirate networks and dedicated OTT applications. Some illegitimate, subscription-based pirate services are now so good that consumers think they are using the brand’s own service, damaging the brand of the legitimate service and preventing upsell opportunities.

    But with superior intelligence and the appropriate technology and legal procedures in place, the industry can stay one step ahead, protect its revenue streams and stop criminals siphoning off billions in revenue that rightfully belong to content owners and services providers.

    Pirate profiteers raise the stakes

    Although low quality pirate content filmed surreptitiously in cinemas is still available, as more consumers switch to digital platforms, pirates are using increasingly sophisticated ways to steal content – and deliver it in pristine quality.

    And the pirates’ methods have advanced considerably since they simply exploited “the analogue hole”: in other words, stole content from the HDMI ports of Set Top Boxes. As license owners and operators have increased their protection methods, cracking down with a combination of source-detection and disruption technologies as well as legal action, pirates have been hunting for new and more concealed ways to source content and find the weak link in the chain.

    From Digital Rights Management (DRM) hacking as seen recently with Widevine, to bypassing client watermarking and manipulating legitimate OTT applications, today’s streaming pirates have found ways to steal not just high-quality content but entire OTT services, including redistributing directly from the service provider’s content delivery network (CDN).

    Sourcing, aggregating and distributing content

    A quick Google search will quickly take you into a world of organised crime: industrial scale professional hackers, criminal technology experts with content aggregators, content wholesalers and content resellers conducting the biggest criminal heist the world has ever seen.

    Current anti-piracy approaches – such as DRM, client hardening and concurrency restrictions are simply scratching the surface of OTT piracy and pirates continue to profit.

    Using the intelligence provided by our operational security team and with access to pirates’ scripts, we have unearthed the root source of this problem – the OTT protocol is broken. The technology of OTT delivery makes it simple and cheap to set up as a pirate operator. Pirates don’t necessarily need to break the DRM to steal content. Using pirate servers and clients, pirates are hacking the OTT protocol to get the DRM license and redirect pirate clients to legitimate service and content providers’ CDNs.

    With little to no acquisition or content costs, pirates have become ultimate media super-aggregators. They can bring highly-sought after content together at an unbeatable price with no geo restrictions or competition law challenges – and then redistribute the stolen content to their paying customers at the expense of the video service provider by using their infrastructure undetected. 

    Protecting content across the ecosystem

    With an understanding about the methods used and insight into how pirates operate, Synamedia has developed the industry’s first solution to systemically address the inherent weaknesses that make it easy for pirates to not only steal content but also entire OTT services, including gaining access to the service provider’s CDN.

    Synamedia OTT ServiceGuard makes it possible to securely distribute content on open platforms by validating that only legitimate subscribers and applications are granted authorised access and receive content. It gives each client a unique identity that is not cloneable and allocates secure keys for signing service requests, ensuring all client messages are validated for their authenticity and origin. This has a critical role to play in protecting content, but tackling piracy requires an all-round team approach, blending pre-breach approaches with proactive detection and disruption technologies and solutions.

    Synamedia’s unrivalled intelligence-based model leverages AI technologies alongside human intelligence – including undercover investigators and cyber security, psychology, criminology, and sociology experts – to monitor and map the piracy supply chain, detect, deter and disrupt piracy and orchestrate anti-piracy activities and legal and technical takedowns.

    The financial rewards on offer and the ease of set-up – combined with the low risk of arrest or meaningful punishment – means the problem of piracy will not go away.  But, by making life as difficult as possible for both pirates and viewers of illicit streams and making legal subscriptions more attractive, content owners and rights holders can not only protect their content investments, but video service providers can cut infrastructure costs and create the opportunity to capture new subscribers.

    (Deepak Bhatia is general manager and head of sales, India at Synamedia. The views expressed in this column are personal and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them)

     

  • Hotstar is most preferred OTT choice: Axis My India survey

    Hotstar is most preferred OTT choice: Axis My India survey

    Mumbai: Consumer data intelligence company Axis My India’s latest findings for the India Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI) revealed that 27 per cent of people in the country watch OTT, with the majority of viewers being in the age group of 18-35. Hotstar is the preferred choice, followed by Amazon Prime, Netflix, Jio TV, and MX Player.

    27 per cent viewers prefer Hindi and regional websites and apps, while 24 per cent (comprising 60 per cent youth) prefer English. 31 per cent of the population in southern India prefers using apps and websites in the English language. Regional language apps and sites claimed 34 per cent preference among them, revealed the survey data.

    Consumption of media remains the same for a majority of 52 per cent of families which reflects the highest percentage since the last four months and is majorly from the south of India. It has increased for 22 per cent of the families, majorly from east and north amongst 18-25 and 26-35 year-olds. Overall, the net score of this month is at -4 as compared to -2 for the previous month.

    India Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI) is a monthly analysis of consumer perception on a wide range of issues. The surveys were carried out via computer-aided telephonic interviews with a sample size of 10552 people across 36 states. 64 per cent belonged from rural India; 36 per cent were from urban centres.

    The sentiment analysis delves into five relevant sub-indices – overall household spending, spending on essential and non-essential items, spending on healthcare, media consumption habits, and mobility trends.

    Commenting on the November report, Axis My India CMD Pradeep Gupta said, “With the year approaching an end, we witness consumers’ gradual return to normalcy, though a slight drop in Net Promoter Score also demonstrates that the impact of festive spending is slowly tapering.”

    Sharing insights on media consumption, he added, “While media consumption remains standard for the majority, our CSI Survey has further revealed that consumers from the north as well as the south favour vernacular languages when engaging with the digital mediums. This insight opens up opportunities for various local as well as national and international players in terms of where and in which form to place their brand content and advertisements.”

  • Netflix India offers a thrilling treat in latest promo for ‘Red Notice’

    Netflix India offers a thrilling treat in latest promo for ‘Red Notice’

    Mumbai: Netflix India has come out with a new campaign for its action-packed Hollywood blockbuster movie, ‘Red Notice’. Conceptualised by 22feet Tribal Worldwide, the campaign invites fans to experience an adrenaline rush at the ‘Red Notice Shop’, where everything is free if they can steal it!

    The Red Notice Shop has been brought to life in a 3000 sq. ft. retail space at Phoenix Palladium, Mumbai. The space is guarded with lasers, sensors, secret codes, CCTV cameras, alarms, and top-notch security. The ‘heist’ is successfully completed if one is able to ‘steal’ from the Red Notice Shop. Prizes include not only goodies, tech delights, ownable shop merchandise but also three precious gold Faberge eggs from the film with exclusive rewards inside them, said the streaming network in a media statement.

    22feet Tribal Worldwide national creative director Debashish Ghosh said, “Most viewers fantasise about being in a role similar to one of their favourite characters or plots in a film. We wanted to give them an unexpected leg-up. So, we set up a shop to pull off a heist where stealers are keepers if you don’t get caught. And if you do, you don’t land up behind bars. Either way, the experience leaves an indelible mark and lodges Netflix & Red Notice in your memory for good.”

    To generate buzz about the Red Notice Shop, a promo film was also launched that introduced the shop to the fans. This was followed by a series of short, tutorial videos featuring stand-up comic Prashasti Singh and actor Javed Jaffrey. In these tutorials, the duo is seen dodging the multiple security measures at the ‘Red Notice Shop’ in an attempt to steal the Faberge egg – failing at stealing but winning at bringing home the fun quotient.  

  • Right time for the LCO ecosystem to reinvent itself: Jio Platforms’ Saurabh Sancheti

    Right time for the LCO ecosystem to reinvent itself: Jio Platforms’ Saurabh Sancheti

    Mumbai: Saurabh Sancheti, the young and dynamic CFO of Jio Platfroms, and one of Fortune India’s 40 under 40 has been instrumental in scripting the success story of Reliance’s Cable business post its acquisition of two largest cable TV and broadband companies in the country – Hathway Cable & Datacom and DEN Networks for a sum of Rs 5,230 crore in October of 2018.

    At the recently concluded Apos India Summit, Sancheti discussed the transformative journey of the two acquired assets, and the challenges and opportunities for Pay TV distribution industry in the light of regulatory and technological changes.

    At the time of acquisition, and much after that as well, Reliance’s Cable business was running at an operating loss. Tasked with bringing about a disruption, Sancheti went on a brainstorming spree to figure out its strengths and problems areas. After several talks with top executives, Local Cable Operators (LCOs) as well as customers, he concluded that the one thing Cable needed was operating cash flows to be positive.

    “That is fundamental, because if you scale up a business which is losing on a unit basis, then you are only scaling up the losses,” he said. “The singular problem that I could pinpoint here was that we were not collecting whatever we billed. And if we could do that, we were home. No one disputes the bill per se; it was all about collection. That’s where I suggested moving Cable to prepaid – a rather ‘blasphemous’ idea for that time.”

    The impact was such that operating cash flows swung from a negative territory to a positive Rs 800 crore per year. Within six months most of the competition also turned to the prepaid model, bringing about a systemic change in the ecosystem.

    Since then industry players have collaborated on various initiatives and models. “The sector which was plagued with a lot of trust issues and fights has, today, come together under the umbrella of the All India Digital Cable Federation (AIDCF) which has become a de-facto platform for constructive discussions.  The AIDCF is also playing a proactive role in conveying our concerns to the government and regulatory bodies,” shared Sancheti.

    Elaborating on the regulatory challenges and their impact on the business currently as well as in the coming years, he remarked, “While a lot of changes in regulations have taken place in the past few years, the crux of it all is that the Trai is advancing in a direction which is more pro-consumer; whether it’s more consumer choice, more a-la-carte, or lesser bundling, the underlying intent is the same. This brings a lot of complexity for the business.”

    Giving a perspective in numbers, he added, “Any large e-commerce company which is handling Stock keeping units (SKUs) from multiple businesses and industries tops out a 100-150,000 SKUs. Today we are serving more than one million unique combination or SKUs to our customers at Den, Hathway, and GTPL. This is coming from an industry which until two years back (before the acquisition) was serving less than 100 SKUs. So, there has been a sea change in offerings as well as technology.”

    But even as the regulator works towards bringing the customer back in focus, there are apprehensions about the mindset and workings of the industry leadership which doesn’t seem to have been very customer-centric historically. Sancheti contended that the situation is changing, and today, not just the top leadership and MSOs, but many LCOs too have a customer friendly and progressive outlook.

    The advent of OTT and the allegedly predatory expansion of DD Free dish universe have posed major challenges to Pay TV distribution in the past couple of years. Current realities notwithstanding, Sancheti believes that there exists a huge opportunity.

    “Out of the country’s 280 million households, nearly 200 million own TV.  Of the 200 million, only about 120 million have Pay TV. So, clearly no other market has such potential as India. The problem is that this base has largely remained stagnant over the years primarily because of two factors. At the higher tier it is the advent of OTT, and at the lower, it’s DD Free Dish which has grown rapidly in last four-five years,” he added.

    There’s also a third challenge that he recognises as needing quick intervention – the dismally low earnings of Cable operators. “In the prevailing circumstances where not just competition from new technology, but even regulatory hurdles like NCF cap are working against them, an LCO takes home on an average Rs. 15000, which is just slightly above the minimum wages. Again, this is just a fraction of what they used to earn previously.”

    The good thing is that all players in the industry are now aware of these challenges, and what needs to be done. The question is ‘how’.

    Sharing his approach and vision for tackling these issues, Sancheti stated, “As an MSO we are trying to work on a low-cost rural market product and the idea is that ‘can we have a price point which can truly challenge Free Dish’. The North Star here is ‘rupee-a-day’ product. If we can have it, we can get at least 40-50 million homes into the Pay TV base.”

    One of the ways of getting to it is reinventing the entire LCO ecosystem as a ‘reseller of services’, he observed. “Our biggest strength as MSOs and LCOs is the ‘last-mile access’. As distributors we ‘own that home’ and the trust and relationship shared with it, has in many cases, been built over decades. If we can leverage it to become resellers of services like OTT and broadband, the market potential of 40-50 million can be unlocked.”

    In addition to solving the problem of LCO incomes, this ‘integrated platform play’ will help the industry to achieve the bigger objective of collectively arriving at the hypothesised challenger product to take on Free Dish.

    “Live TV on a standalone basis is not practicable anymore. So, we clearly need to act as distributors of more services. This will divide costs between businesses, thus making a lot of under-connected and unconnected homes more viable. Ultimately, all of this will tie back to our ‘rupee-a-day’ product,” elaborated Sancheti.

    Signing off on a very positive note he said, “We are standing at an inflection point where the entire LCO model is at the right stage to be reinvented. There’s no market more attractive than India. I strongly believe that it has a long-term potential of at least 170-180 million Pay TV base; it’s doable. An 80 million broadband base is also doable, all within three years.”

  • There needs to be a level playing field: Tata Sky CEO Harit Nagpal on Free Dish issue

    There needs to be a level playing field: Tata Sky CEO Harit Nagpal on Free Dish issue

    Mumbai: Harit Nagpal, the MD and CEO of India’s largest Pay TV distributor – Tata Sky is known to be a vocal man. Time and again, he has used several platforms and occasions to bring the industry’s concerns to the notice of the government and regulators. Outlining these issues once again at the APOS India Summit – the two day virtual-event that concluded recently, Nagpal stressed upon the need to iron out disparities in regulation that exist in the current ecosystem.

    With the rapid emergence of multiple distribution formats and technologies in the past few years, he strongly believes that the “time has come for everyone to step back and take a look at the regulatory inconsistencies and biases prevailing across platforms.”

    Between the three main distribution technologies of DTH, Cable and OTT, “while both DTH and cable are licensed, regulated and censored (self), DTH pays a license fee while Cable doesn’t. OTTs, on the other hand, are neither licensed, nor regulated or censored, and they don’t even pay a license fee. Just because they came in at different points in time, different rules are applied to each one of them,” said Nagpal.

    In September, Tata Sky and Airtel Digital TV had written to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) asking the telecom regulator to address the issue of broadcasters making their pay channels available for free on DD Free Dish.

    Also Read: https://www.indiantelevision.com/dth/dth-operator/dth-operators-write-to-trai-over-broadcasters-offering-pay-channels-on-dd-free-dish-210909

    At the summit, Nagpal reiterated that while he appreciates Free Dish as a great channel of customer acquisition, there has to be a level playing field.  “There are roughly 100 million homes in India that don’t have a TV. They will not invest in a TV set and subscription simultaneously. Hence, at any given point in time there is a large pool that owns a TV but is not paying for subscription services. A subset of this population moves into the Pay TV universe every year, opening up a huge customer acquisition opportunity for us,” he explained, adding that “the problem begins when Free Dish starts serving them at no cost, the same content that we offer for a price.”

    According to Nagpal, this is an unfair practice on the part of certain broadcasters. It goes against the current tariff regime which mandates designating of channels as either pay or FTA. “This designation should be consistent across platforms,” he insisted. “A customer in rural areas does not understand regulations, and he starts distrusting us.”

    Commenting on the overall growth this year, Nagpal said, “We are north of 17 million homes; much in the same range as what we lost to FTA and economic losses faced by rural India. We have managed to keep our heads above water.”

    Despite the many challenges, he believes that pay TV delivered via cable or satellite cannot be written off in India so quickly. “OTT requires high quality broadband getting into homes, in which case the customer has to pay for both content as well as the pipe. In the case of cable and satellite they pay for the content only. So, when we talk of the masses, Pay TV is here to stay. Out of the 100 million homes without a TV some will keep getting them every year, and those numbers are far larger than the growth of paid OTT. Pay TV and FTA will also coexist and grow.”

    Even though DTH may not be facing an existential threat from either Free Dish/FTA or OTTs, its content that has historically been ‘mass’, will have to evolve, asserted Nagpal. “The masses also want innovation which is why there are nine million HD homes today, and many with HD are now looking for something new. Innovation has, therefore, constantly been on our radar. With regard to content as well, there is a very large number of discerning viewers among those who do not have access to the pipe. They are not happy with the ‘saas-bahu’ or the content of the past. There is a niche which is likely to grow, for which content needs to be invested in by broadcasters.”

    In fact, trends show that customers are not going off Pay TV even when they can afford or avail streaming services. Sharing his observations, the Tata Sky Nagpal stated, “The premium end of our user base did not switch off their Pay TV regardless of having access to VOD services. Binge Plus was an attempt to cater to this set of audiences. Whether a consumer wants to watch OTT or Linear on phone, tablet or the TV set, my job is simply to make it convenient for them.”

    In this space again, he welcomes the advent of aggregators like Prime Channels and Google TV to grow the market and industry together.

    Concluding the discussion with his thoughts on Tata Sky and the overall broadband market, Nagpal shared, “Broadband was never intended for the mass market because we didn’t have a network of fibre in the ground across the country. Our intention is only to reach our premium customers, and hence, it will remain a niche, very high-quality broadband play for us.”

    As for satellite, he averred, “In my understanding broadband is not reaching rural areas not because it is difficult to lay a wire to that place, but the fact that it will be difficult to find enough people in a village who can pay Rs 800 per month, month-on-month. Unless it can be delivered at the rate of Rs 200-300 per month, the economics of which is unviable, it looks unlikely. But we may be surprised in the future.”

  • Sunstone Eduversity’s maiden Content Day concludes, over 20 brands participate

    Sunstone Eduversity’s maiden Content Day concludes, over 20 brands participate

    MumbaI: Sunstone Eduversity concluded its maiden Content Day event, which witnessed participation from over 20 brands. The event was organised to shortlist the best Content ideas from top media houses, OTT platforms, production houses and youth-oriented content creators, from all over India.

    Apart from YouTube, MTV and MX Player, the event also saw Voot, Mirchi, Culture Machine, Jagran Group and Anugrah Madison competing with each other in a bid to impress the jury and bag a spot in Sunstone’s 2022 Marketing Calendar.

    Content Day is Sunstone Eduversity’s first self-curated mega event since the higher education platform bagged $28 Million in a Series-B round of funding, in October this year. It also marks the brand’s first manoeuvre towards its upcoming marketing and brand-building initiative wherein it plans to venture into fictional web-series content to engage with students and parents through OTT platforms and in-person/virtual interaction with students from various colleges across cities, in the form of Business Case Studies, Hackathon Competitions, and various other tools.

    Sunstone Eduversity co-founder & CEO Ashish Munjal said, “We plan to deploy a significant portion of our recent Series-B fundraise towards building cutting-edge learning & technology assets, that will help us communicate with our TGs upfront. Our Content Day event is a crucial step forward towards the creation of an adhesive communication strategy which will not only enable us to connect with our audience more effectively, but also educate them about the various exciting propositions in store.”

    Sunstone Eduversity head of marketing Alekhya Chakrabarty said, “This is the ideal time for the brand to go the extra mile and have active conversations with patrons that would help them make informed decisions. Given that parents are key decision-makers in their children’s higher education journeys, they deserve to be equally informed of India’s job market requirements and the skills necessary for one to make a mark.”

  • HITS combines flexibility of DTH and reliability of cable: NXT Digital CEO Vynsley Fernandes

    HITS combines flexibility of DTH and reliability of cable: NXT Digital CEO Vynsley Fernandes

    Mumbai: Headend-in-the-sky (HITS) combined the flexibility and quality of direct-to-home (DTH) services and the reliability and pricing of cable television, said NXT Digital managing director and chief executive officer Vynsley Fernandes on Wednesday. NXT Digital is the only HITS operator in India and Fernandes is bullish on the prospects of video and broadband aggregation using HITS technology.

    In a conversation with Media Partners Asia co-founder and senior partner Vivek Couto at the Apos India summit on Wednesday, Fernandes spoke about structural developments in the TV distribution ecosystem, pricing parity for consumers, satellite broadband policy and more.

    Cable TV has been around since 1995 and the Hinduja Group introduced HITS to India in 2015. The way HITS technology works is that channels are aggregated at an Earth Station, uplinked to a satellite and instead of being downlinked directly to the customers, like DTH, they are received by cable operators via a refrigerator-sized unit and redistributed to customers, explained Fernandes. HITS allows local cable operators to digitise overnight in remote markets such as Lakshadweep, Andaman and Kargil.

    HITS is a capex light model. Post pandemic, there were last mile owners who wanted to be relevant and grow. The challenge was investing in the back-end and connecting to consumers. Fernandes said, “We already have access to 4400 pin codes and we’ve launched 40 NXT Hubs across the country. These NXT Hubs are owned and operated by us and are future-ready. Any last mile owner within 150 square feet can approach a NXT Hub and offer 650 TV channels and broadband speeds of 100 mbps overnight. It empowers the last mile owner to become a digital services provider. By the end of this financial year (March 2022) we will have 100 such NXT Hubs across the country.”

    “Last year, cyclones hit India and MSO fibre got damaged. They had the option to lay fibre but that would take a couple of months or move to another platform. We thought, what if they used our infrastructure to go digital? So, we approached the ministry and shared this idea. Credit to the ministry of information and broadcasting, literally in a few months by November 2020 it was promulgating infrastructure sharing for HITS with MSOs,” he added.

    Speaking about structural developments in the content distribution ecosystem, Fernandes said, “There are two things happening that are changing the structural makeup of distribution in terms of consumption – NTO 1.0 which is bringing parity and transparency and the pandemic.”

    “Post-pandemic, OTT platforms have realised that they can be more relevant to customers as part of an aggregated offering rather than as a standalone service,” observed Fernandes. “In metros where broadband speeds are 100 mbps and above, in towns and smaller markets, people want the same product but in smaller bundles or what we call ‘skinny bundles’. These customers have broadband speeds of 10mbps and their main consumption is not entertainment but access to e-medicine or e-education.”

    In terms of how much a consumer is willing to pay for content, Vynsley noted, “The actual prices differ widely across the country. There are markets where consumers average revenue per user (ARPU) is under $3, content cost is $2-3. In these markets, there’s not much offtake in terms of paid OTT services, instead consumers access YouTube and other freemium platforms. If you move to cities, the pricing is $300 (Rs 28,000-30,000) for an annual subscription. This is a significant opportunity for multi-system operators for flexi-play.”

    Fernandes is of the view that HITS will increase revenues for the entire ecosystem. “Today, a lot of MSOs look at certain markets as not viable because the cost of connectivity is still significant,” he said. “That’s why infrastructure sharing will benefit MSOs and broadcasters. MSO will share capacity and be able to deliver value to customers and better quality of service, while broadcasters will improve their bottom lines.”

    In Q1, NXT Digital reported five million video subscribers and one million broadband users growing at 7-10 per cent year-on-year. “There is a 30 per cent overlap between our video and broadband user base,” said Fernandes. “That means a quarter of a million customers are consuming both linear/digital products. There is a runway to grow that base to a healthy 50-60 per cent and that’s our target vision for the business. We’ve just launched our OTT product and are looking at bundled ARPUs. Linear TV ARPUs are currently at Rs 300 and OTT delivers higher ARPUs for us. It doesn’t concern me too much which part of revenue delivers but our offering should reach every demographic in the country.”

    During the pandemic, the government couldn’t reach out of several million people who resided in areas where connectivity was patchy. It was prompted to launch e-agriculture and e-medicine services and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has released recommendations on satellite-based connectivity for low bit rate applications. “The government is working on a clear plan and sees the tremendous need for broadband over satellite,” noted Fernandes.

    “Satellite broadband is a clear parallel to HITS which was needed to deliver video in markets that could not be serviced by terrestrial networks,” said Fernandes. “Broadband serves the same void by catering to markets that cannot be serviced by terrestrial fibre. Today, a broadband over satellite provider needs four things – reach and footprint, a company with experience working with satellite, regulatory knowledge and ability to work with industry stakeholders.”

  • Prime Video’s Gaurav Gandhi, Disney+ Hotstar’s Sunil Rayan on growing SVOD in India

    Prime Video’s Gaurav Gandhi, Disney+ Hotstar’s Sunil Rayan on growing SVOD in India

    Mumbai: After the windfall of 2020, the streaming industry saw consumers’ on-demand content consumption patterns getting more and more well-entrenched and diversified in 2021. As exaggerated trends rationalised, players in the OTT world emerged out of the unarguably positive conundrum with a lot more clarity on charting their individual growth stories and also that of the industry as a whole.

    At the Apos Indian Summit – a two-day virtual event which concluded on 24 November – Disney+ Hotstar president Sunil Rayan and Amazon Prime Video country head Gaurav Gandhi talked about having learned the “balancing act” through the session titled – ‘The Next Stage of Growth for Online Video’.

    Drivers for Adoption

    In addition to widely discussed factors such as affordability of internet services, smartphones, and smart TVs and the availability of content, Rayan and Gandhi had their own unique insights on the growth drivers for streaming services. 

    According to Rayan the surge in volume and diversity of content through the years has brought about the mainstreaming of online video in different stages. “While the early stages were mostly about penetrating the market, the second wave of creating localised content that we are currently riding has propelled the trend further. Going into the third stage of deep localisation where user experience will become highly personalised, we will witness another leap in adoption,” he averred. 

    Like Rayan, Gandhi too believes that the encouraging pace at which Indians took to on-demand services was also a result of a new wave of content coming in. “The content distribution structure in India has always been such that it didn’t allow scope for any kind of premium cable or premium pay. As a result, we never really had access to high cinematic quality content. In the last three or four years streaming platforms have brought world-class content including original long-format series that Indian viewers had not seen before. And this includes both global content and local, home-grown stories,” he said.

    Commenting further, he added that a significant factor in the five-year-growth story of video streaming in India has been its “rich and robust content ecosystem with content industries in over ten languages. That makes it a prolific entertainment market.”

    The emergence of films as a popular segment on streaming platforms, accentuated by the direct-to-digital wave of 2020, further quickened the pace of adoption. “India has a large audience base that loves movies, but the country is very under-screened. Video streaming not only solved the problem of limited access to new movies in the very early window but also enhanced their reach and accessibility. Indian films are today being watched in over 4500 cities and towns and 180-190 countries worldwide on various streaming services. It has also encouraged talent, fetching its appeal across borders,” stated Gandhi.

    Both Rayan and Gandhi recognised the role of advancements in digital payment infrastructure in transforming a largely ad-supported industry into subscription-driven. Rayan shared that a “significant portion of payments for Disney+ Hotstar comes through UPI.”

    Developments such as these and others like rapid growth in smart TV sales, give Gandhi a good reason to dispel the prevailing notion of India being a highly price-sensitive market where viewers are unwilling to pay for content. He estimates the addressable market for SVOD in India to be above 50 million currently, with a potential to reach nearly 100 million in the coming years.

    The response to Disney+ Hotstar’s revised pricing plan designed to have devices tailored against tiers is another testimony to the acceptance of SVOD by value-seeking customers. Elaborating on the rationale behind the new scheme, he stated, “While we were providing access to all types of content, the mode of access is where we thought we could add more value. The broad idea was to make available all types of content to individuals as opposed to having content restrictions by tiers.”

    Growing the SVOD Category

    Rayan observed that going ahead “the overall success of SVOD will depend on three factors – making content more interactive, innovation in business models beyond the existing freemium, AVOD, TVOD, SVOD to something like ‘mircotransactions,’ and taking the user experience to a level where people can get their ‘intent’ from the platform itself.”

    Disney+ Hotstar started its Originals journey in 2019 and it has since then diversified into various genres and formats. “We intend to deliver a piece of original content every two weeks for all our different kinds of users including sports fans, active streaming users, and ‘TV watchers’  who use OTT as a ‘companion app’ to TV. Additionally, we are also exploring ways to get internet users on to our platform with short-form content, short but episodic and other formats that are native to digital,” said Rayan. 

    India is one of the highest engaged countries for Prime Video service in the world. Having grown three times in the last two years, today it enjoys viewership from 99 per cent of the pin codes. Another highly encouraging development witnessed by the brand is the emergence of ‘cross viewership’ wherein viewers are watching content across languages. “Today 50 per cent of the viewership for Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada DTS films on our platform comes from outside the home state. Similarly, international language content such as ‘Parasite’ last year or ‘Maradona: The Blessed Dream’, this year is being viewed widely,” shared Gandhi.

    He credits the quality of Indian content on streaming services that are at par with international standards for the 20 per cent viewership (one in every five views) on Prime Video originals coming from outside India. According to Gandhi, another significant trend in the past couple of years, especially through 2020-21, has been the acceptance of OTTs as a ‘living room phenomenon’ and a product for the household as well as the individual, simultaneously.

    Buoyed by these developments, Prime Video has doubled down on investments in the content to keep the momentum on SVOD going in 2022. As regards sports content, while it has made a start in the direction, Gandhi asserted, “We feel very good about the fact that our overall entertainment portfolio has many strong pieces in it, and we are not dependent on anyone. We would like to evaluate the opportunities that exist in sports, but we are not compelled to.”

    For Disney+ Hotstar 2022 will be about “working on user engagement, experience, and stickiness while delivering quality content at scale,” informed Rayan.

  • YuppTV Scope partners with ION broadband

    YuppTV Scope partners with ION broadband

    Mumbai: Single subscription video streaming platform YuppTV Scope has partnered with ION broadband to offer OTT services to its users.

    YuppTV Scope offers users a unified interface to all premium OTT apps such as SonyLIV, Zee5, Epic On, and YuppTV using a single subscription, while eliminating the task of accessing multiple apps. ION broadband has an audience base of four lakh customers and around 25,000 access points in more than 60 cities across the country and aims to provide a traditional TV-like experience for consumers in a seamless manner.

    “We are delighted to announce our partnership with ION broadband. This partnership further highlights the growing customer base for OTT platforms across genres,” said YuppTV founder and chief executive officer Uday Reddy. “Users will be able to enjoy YuppTV Scope’s unique and seamless video entertainment experience using a technologically advanced, all-encompassing platform and enjoy a traditional TV-like experience’’

    ION broadband provides cutting-edge internet solutions to suit its various segments like retail, hospitality, campus wi-fi, corporate, smart city, airports, and public wi-fi.

    “OTT consumption has been on the rise in India, owing to the pandemic. We are committed to keeping in touch with the changing trends and offering relevant services for our vast customer base and providing them with a traditional TV-like experience in a seamless manner,” said ION brand management business development Vielas Salunkke. “ION broadband is delighted to collaborate with YuppTV scope and believe that the platform will revolutionise the way content is consumed in the country.”