There are currently about 46 providers of over-the-top media services (OTT) in India, which distribute streaming media over the Internet. In fiscal year 2018, the OTT market in India was worth crore. The streaming market in India is predicted to be worth $15 billion by 2030, with $12.5 billion coming from the video market and $2.5 billion from audio. The OTT market in fiscal year 2020 was estimated to be worth $1.7 billion.
History and growth
The first dependent Indian OTT platform was BIGFlix, launched by Reliance Entertainment in 2008. In 2010 Digivive 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 smart phones and did so during 2013 and 2014. The livestream of the IPL since 2015, when rights were won, played an important role in the growth of another OTT platform, Hotstar (now Disney+ Hotstar) in India. OTT gained significant momentum in India when both DittoTV (Zee) and Sony Liv were launched in the Indian market around 2013. Ditto TV was an aggregator platform containing shows across all media channels including Star, Sony, Viacom, Zee, etc.
Hotstar
Hotstar, (now Disney+ 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. Hotstar has the exclusive streaming rights of IPL in India, which is one of the biggest sporting event in India.
Netflix
American streaming service Netflix entered India in January 2016. In April 2017, it was registered as a limited liability partnership (LLP) and started commissioning content. It earned a net profit of ₹2020,000 (₹2.02 million) 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 (BKC) 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 Video and Disney+ Hotstar, each of which charge lower subscription rates than Netflix.
Other OTT providers
AAO NXT, the first independent OTT platform that originated from Odisha, is a flagship product of Kaustav DreamWorks. Apart from the website, they also have application for Android mobiles and TVs. The content library of AAO NXT is unique in terms of originality of the content irrespective of the language. Short films, movies, and web series can be viewed in their original language along with English subtitles.
nexGTv is the flagship product of Digivive Services Pvt Ltd. Its app offers users entertainment across multiple 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 In My City with Priyanka Chopra making her mobile series debut.
Sun NXT is an Indian video on demand service run by Sun TV Network. It was launched in June 2017, streaming in Tamil language and six other Launguages. The platform has more than 4,000 Tamil movies and 200 Tamil shows, as well as regional movies and shows. Sun NXT also streams a large library of its own Sun TV shows and movies. In India Sun NXT launched its TV shows and movies also in Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and Marathi.
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.