Day: August 2, 2018

With nearly 500 million internet users, a figure that is growing at a rate of 8%, India is one of the largest drivers of digital innovation across the world. India’s potential as a market for global media and entertainment sector is unprecedented, and a liberal investment environment is helping foreign players to enter the Indian market easily. The government’s Digital India Initiative is helping even the most remote villages to stay connected. Indian culture values entertainment and the growth potential for media houses and entertainment giants are enormous. Over-the-top (OTT) media services have already entered India, and services such as Netflix, and Amazon Prime have a growing number of users across the country. Surprisingly, OTT is growing popular even in smaller towns and villages where internet speed has been questionable, to say the least. In such a scenario, OTT is going to drive innovation in India simply because of the sheer value of the market that India offers. In this article, let us take a look at how OTT is set to change the entertainment and digital scene in India. What do the numbers say? When we look at statistics related to internet usage in India, it is quite unavoidable to feel overwhelmed by the sheer figures. These figures indicate that video consumption in India is growing at the speed of light, and much of the aspirational rural and small-town users have already begun to stream media using high-speed mobile internet connections. With a rural to urban migration pattern, accessing high-speed internet connections is not only easy but also a reality already in the making. Of the half a billion internet users, there are at least 180 million active online video viewers. In 2017, the OTT market in India was valued at 37 billion rupees. OTT market in India is expected to grow at 17.3% in the next five years. People have already begun to supplement TV viewing with multiple OTT platforms such as Amazon Prime and Netflix. India is a diverse country with more than 22 official languages. Content in these languages is set to grow at an unprecedented rate. By 2020, there will be more than 700 million smartphone users in India Here are the top 7 areas where OTT is going to spur innovation : Personalized content The concept of personalized content is relatively new in India. However, OTT is set to change all that, and we can see that already happening. Netflix, Apple Music, Amazon Prime, and other OTT-based services have begun to offer personalized content to a market that was mostly used to the hand-me-down equivalent in media content. Personalization spurred by OTT will likely have cultural and social ramifications but in a positive manner. Indian media consumption has been dominated by proscriptive relaying of content without much choice for the actual viewer or consumer. OTT will change that and help Indian users to choose what they want, and watch they will most likely want to watch or listen. Newer players will make use of data insight to change algorithms and develop apps and media content that will actually appeal to individual users. In other words, OTT will help propel the process of individualization of Indian entertainment and media consumption. Streaming of video and audio More than 70% of revenue earned by the Indian music industry now comes from digital streaming. Affordable and high-speed internet connections have helped the music industry to make use of online platforms to offer music as OTT. Similarly, Indian movies and TV shows have a huge potential to reach the market via OTT. Most people in India have begun to replace their televisions with smartphones for media consumption. As smartphones usage tends to be an individual affair, as opposed to a family watching TV, individualization, and personalization of music and movies will grow. There is a potential market for larger screen smartphones in India. Innovation in device manufacturing and accessories is an area that manufacturers and distributors should look at. Accessories such as smart headphones, artificial intelligence, and IoT-based media consumption devices, etc. have a promising future in India, thanks to OTT. Mushrooming of online gaming Video games in India are quite popular, throughout of reach for most ordinary citizens. Xbox, Nintendo, and PlayStation were all out of reach for ordinary and rural Indians, and their usage was limited to affluent urban users. The advent of affordable Android-based smartphones have democratized online gaming and brought gameplay to millions of smartphone users across the country. OTT has a huge role to play in bringing video game content to Indian users. Potential opportunities in online gaming include video games developed in various languages of India, indigenous game development, and streaming of global video games on subscription models. 4G speeds, OTT, and affordable subscriptions have already begun to help users across India play video games. Most video game players use smartphones priced $300 or below, and there is a market for large-screen smartphones in this particular demographic. It is no wonder that the gaming industry in India is expected to become a $1 billion industry. Content in various languages of India Right from sports, music, and movies to online gaming, content in regional languages is likely to be the focus of media houses, whether national or international. SonyLIV, for instance, believes that a large proportion of its OTT offering will depend on media consumption in languages other than English, such as Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, etc. In fact, Sony has plans to attract 200 million users from various linguistic states of India, subverting the idea of homogeneous media consumption. While music and movies already have an OTT presence for various languages of India, OTT-based TV services hold promising opportunities as well. As discussed earlier, the gradual replacement of TVs with smartphones will likely open up opportunities for TV content creators and aggregators as well. Innovation in this area will focus on making TV-streaming in regional content quicker and more accessible. Mobile app streaming via OTT is another area that might open doors to