Rise of OTTs in India

OTT foreshadowing the TV and Theatre is quite foreseen. But the pandemic has made it even more obvious that OTT can remain unbeaten amid a groundbreaking global crisis. The easy availability of the internet and the low-cost subscriptions made it possible for many Indian households to stick to over the top services.

The new releases during the pandemic lead to an immense rise in the OTT viewership. Understanding the demand for OTT platforms, many media houses and giant entertainment organizations launched their own OTT platforms to top the game. But it wasn’t a cakewalk for OTTs to enter the Indian market.

It all started from many unsuccessful attempts. Reliance has launched its first OTT channel, BIGFlix in 2006, but it went unnoticed. However, the Indian OTT industry has seen a surge in the users after the entertainment giant, Star India launched Hotstar. Hotstar has acquired a viewership of 96% according to their watch report survey in 2018.

What Did Hotstar Do Right?

Indian TV produces a huge number of drama series and TV shows on a daily basis. Despite their harebrained stories, the viewership of TV serials over the nation has reached 836 million. This is where Hotstar played right. They streamed their TV shows and serials on the OTT with different plans and subscriptions. And those plans being pocket friendly highly contributed to individuals opting for subscriptions.

Netflix, a well established OTT platform found it harder to make it in the Indian market. With their plans being expensive for the Indian audience, they struggled to gain a foothold in the Indian market. However, they introduced pocket-friendly plans later on and started to produce and stream the regional language movies and series to draw attention. And, that seems to have worked by far.

Prime Video, Hulu, Voot, MX Player have acquired their audience following the demographics. Yet, Hotstar remains invincible.

Bottom Line

The list has gone up to 40 with over 35 million rupees worth in the Indian market. The future seems pretty optimistic for the over the top services given the huge number of investors and demand for new content. A Pwc report, 2020 has also stated that India is the world’s fastest-growing OTT market. That being said, the OTT industry is thus future-proofed.