There are currently about 40 providers of over–the–top media services in India, which distribute streaming media over the Internet. In fiscal year 2018, the OTT market in India was worth crore, and its value grew to ₹35 billion in 2019. According to a KPMG report, the average time spent by Indian subscribers on various OTT platforms is 20–50 minutes.
History and growth
The first dependent Indian OTT platform was BIGFlix, launched by Reliance Entertainment in 2008. In 2010, launched India's first OTT mobile app called nexGTv, which provides access to both live TV and on–demand content. nexGTV is the first app to live–stream Indian Premier League matches on mobile phones and did so during 2013 and 2014. OTT gained significant momentum in India when both DittoTV and Sony Liv were launched in the Indian market around 2013. DittoTV was an aggregator platform containing shows across all media channels including Star, Sony, Viacom, Zee, etc.
Rise of OTT in India
Rise of Hotstar
,, is the most subscribed–to OTT platform in India, owned by Star India as of July 2020, with around 300 million active users and over 350 million downloads. According to Hotstar's India Watch Report 2018, 96% of watch time on Hotstar comes from videos longer than 20 minutes, while one–third of Hotstar subscribers watch television shows. In 2019, Hotstar began investing crore in generating original content such as "Hotstar Specials". 80% of the viewership on Hotstar comes from drama, movies and sports programs.
American streaming service Netflix entered India in January 2016. In April 2017, it was registered as a limited liability partnership and started commissioning content. It earned a net profit of ₹2020,000 for fiscal year 2017. In fiscal year 2018, Netflix earned revenues of ₹580 million. According to Morgan Stanley Research, Netflix had the highest average watch time of more than 120 minutes but viewer counts of around 20 million in July 2018. As of 2018, Netflix has six million subscribers, of which 5–6% are paid members. India was not affected by Netflix's July 2018 increase in subscription rates for the US and Latin America. Netflix has stated its intent to invest ₹600 Crore in the production of Indian original programming. In late 2018, Netflix bought of office space in Bandra–Kurla Complex in Mumbai as their head office. As of December 2018, Netflix has more than 40 employees in India. Netflix faces tough competition with other OTT platforms in India such as Amazon Prime, Hotstar, Voot and Eros Now, each of which charge lower subscription rates than Netflix.
Other OTT providers
, the OTT platform from Sony India, has 30 million viewers with an average watch time of around 60 minutes. nexGTv is the flagship product of Digivive, a company of Media Matrix Worldwide. Its app offers users entertainment across multple devices. It streams over 200 live TV channels and on–demand content, including movies, TV Shows and videos. In 2015, nexGTv launched India's first mobile talent discovery platform, called "SPOTLight", with director Imtiaz Ali. In 2016 nexGTV, launched its first original series ‘’Ïn My City" with Priyanka Chopra making her mobile series debut. Amazon Prime Video was launched in 2016. The platform has 2,300 titles available including 2,000 movies and about 400 shows. It has announced that it will invest ₹20 billion in creating original content in India. Besides English, Prime Video is available in six Indian languages as of December 2018. Amazon India launched Amazon Prime Music in February 2018. Olly Plus, Was launched in 2020, By Sk Line Production Olly Plus is Odisha's new online where you can enjoy unlimited Odia Videos, Albums, Movies, Comedy Videos, Short Films, Audio Storys and Romantic videos on the go. Olly Plus has passionate plans to make the Cinema of Odisha touch a new height. Hope it will make its dearest dream of making cinema & Short Films globalized come true! Eros Now, an OTT platform launched by Eros International, has the most content among the OTT providers in India, including over 11,000 films, 100,000 music albums & tracks, and 100 TV shows. Eros Now was named as 'Best OTT Platform of the Year 2019' at the British Asian Media Awards. It has 128 million registered users and 13 million paying subscribers as of February 2019. Apart from these, Balaji Telefilms–owned ALTBalaji and Viacom 18–owned Voot and some very popular because of unique content they provide are Fliz Movies and Ullu_App. These are the most–viewed OTT platforms in India. Reliance Jio–owned JioCinema and JioTV, and Times Group–owned MX Player are other OTT service providers in India.
Rise of regional content OTT players
is the first dedicated regional–language OTT service in India. It has launched 30 new shows and 12 original films in Bengali and has acquired about 200 Bengali films and dubbed content from English, Hindi and Arabic. In 2018 it entered Bangladesh as well as the United Arab Emirates, adding a prospective customer base of 180 million. In June 2017, Sun TV Network launched their Sun NXT regional OTT service in four South Indian languages namely Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. In February 2020, Aha OTT platform is launched, which broadcasts exclusively Telugu content.
Future predictions
According to KPMG Media and Entertainment Report 2018, the Indian OTT market is expected to grow 45 percent to reach ₹138 billion by the end of fiscal 2023. According to a report by Ernst & Young, the number of OTT users in the country will reach 500 million by 2020, making India the second–biggest market after the US.
