Indian OTT Audience- Rural Vs Urban
In India, the multimedia industry is rapidly growing and expanding in terms of localization. With their mass media exposure, it began with dubbing, voice-over, and subtitling into National Geographic or Discovery channel material.
Since then, the game has evolved dramatically, with global OTT competitors such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, as well as Indian OTT platforms like Hotstar, Alt Balaji, Zee5, and others, continuing to influence Indian entertainment marketplaces.
According to Boston Consulting Group research, the Indian OTT industry would reach USD 5 billion by 2023.
TV Vs OTT
With more than 40 competitors fighting for increased attention in the chaotic OTT market, the rivalry in the country’s OTT streaming industry is heating up. India is currently regarded as one of Asia’s most prominent OTT marketplaces, and it is recognized as such.
The OTT market in India (2016-18) has had a time of growth and is now entering a phase of consolidation. This year, India is among the top 10 videos OTT markets in the world. By 2023, India will overtake China as the world’s largest internet video market.
There are a lot of televisions in India. Addiction drives it to seek out entertainment, and televisions will continue to be a mainstay of Indian watching habits.
This may be viewed as a window into the hearts of the Indian audience for OTT players.
The Indian Consumer: A Map
OTT rural users have surged ahead of their urban counterparts inside India, just as online Indian language users have outnumbered English-speaking counterparts in cyberspace. Rural consumers communicate in a variety of languages, including Hindi, Bangla, Telugu, and Tamil, and rely on their mobile phones for OTT material. The efforts of Internet service providers have further altered the scenarios by increasing the availability of high-speed Internet at low prices.
The expansion of OTT platforms in India now depends on the new demographics of various consumers.
According to statistics from the Broadband India Forum, rural India accounted for around 65 per cent of video consumption in April 2019, with just 40 per cent of the population having access to the internet. When it comes to the streaming part, normal experience positions it as extremely active in metropolitan regions. However, as previously said, OTT is projected to increase as a result of low-cost data and easy access to smartphones and will draw an increasing number of viewers over time.
The translation of the Indian language into other Indian languages is an established approach.
Dubbed Telugu, Tamil, and other Indian language films are increasingly attracting large numbers of Hindi-speaking spectators.
Localization of digital entertainment and OTT content:
After effectively targeting the urban client base, digital video platforms have expanded to include users in tier 2 and 3 markets as well as rural India. Many new players, such as Shemaroo Me, target local markets with their varied categories of devotional and other regional media. To deliver its entertainment network, Eros has partnered with BSNL, allowing for smaller areas.
Rural areas account for about 65 per cent of OTT content consumption. Despite Reliance Jio’s expansion of the Internet to mobile phones, rural consumers still need access to OTT services. YouTube is easily available and may be installed on Android phones.
TV networks and their native over-the-top (OTT) channels:
With online content providers putting increasing pressure on TV networks, such as Zee, Star, and Sun, have created their own OTT channels to sustain and boost their viewership among rural consumers. According to KPMG Eros Now, over 85% of Indians prefer to view material in various regional languages. This circumstance makes it more appealing for players such as Sun TV and Zee TV to leverage their OTT channels to reach a captive audience.
Premium stuff at a reasonable price:
Although fresh content is a defining feature for OTT platforms, the price of content material keeps OTT players exclusive. Amazon Prime Video and Amazon’s Prime purchasing service, for example, maybe purchased for Rs. 999 per year. Netflix’s Static package, on the other hand, varies to the price Rs. 499 per month. As a result, Netflix released a mobile-only service for Rs. 199 per month to reach out to rural customers and lower the price points. Furthermore, Sony LIV recently released a shampoo sachet pack for Rs 29 that provides seven-day access to premium content, causing other local OTT platforms to suffer.
Telcos have also partnered with OTT providers to assist them to increase sales by diverting data use from their present customers. Some internet service providers supplement their monthly internet bundles by combining their current subscription services through agreements with OTT platforms.
For firms providing global localization services, there’s more to it than merely catering to OTT markets. However, it looks that their fate in India would be intertwined with that of the OTT teams.
Indian-language consumers in rural regions are already fulfilling increased demand for OTT material and will continue to do so shortly. This situation also happens to represent fast-developing consumer demographics in the country’s online domain. To sum up, India’s streaming platforms must support and prioritize their content preferences, which begins with localization.
Subsidy for the transformation:
The rise in monthly costs that cable TV and DTH subscribers had to pay when TRAI allowed TV channels to provide their services on a la carte basis might be one change that accelerates the transition of video consumption. However, the TRAI is now examining the policy’s implementation. However, if monthly cable or DTH prices continue to rise, the transition to OTT will be accelerated.
In small-town India, Covid is driving increased streaming consumption:
While small towns’ growth trajectory began before the pandemic, they continue to grow at a faster rate than metros, with many of these audiences being introduced to OTT (over-the-top) streaming content during the lockdown and certain entertainment formats like movies (in theatres) unavailable,” said Siddhartha Roy, chief operating officer, Hungama Digital Media. According to Roy, viewership in tier-three and tier-two towns has increased by almost 78 per cent and 53 per cent, respectively, compared to 30 per cent in tier-one towns. Small towns, on the other hand, grew on a lesser scale.
The assumption was that the second wave of OTT would be regional, given much of India’s television consumption is regional as well. Streaming was expected to account for about 45 per cent of total usage. It will only be a matter of time before we have a strong and well-developed regional OTT ecosystem. “It would be interesting to observe how it develops,” said Bodhi Tree Multimedia’s Managing Director, Maulik Tolia.
The economic model of OTT platforms would cover subscribership with sponsored content. The majority of their earnings would come from ads. “In terms of video content, Netflix seems to a go-to place. Others are employing a content marketing approach to demonstrate their unique material as a difference from the competition.
Netflix and Amazon are standouts because they know how to promote themselves and can bring in material from sources other than television. Hotstar is relying heavily on cricket.” WAT Consult’s Founder and CEO, Rajiv Dingra.
OTT Future ahead in India:
Production firms are moving digital: As a result of the epidemic, the average time spent by Indian OTT users has grown from about 20 minutes to 50 minutes to 1 hour. In 2012, there were just two OTT platforms in India; currently, there are over 40 platforms that serve subscribers. Around 49% of India’s young spend 2-3 hours each week consuming the stuff on the internet. With this pace of consumption, it’s clear that the content pipeline will be depleted in no time, especially with a ravenous audience. Netflix plans to spend INR 3000 crore to develop content in the Indian context to meet the rising demand for additional content.
Simultaneously, production firms with extensive expertise and understanding of what material customers want are moving away from linear TV and toward OTT. Many production companies have already made their video collection available on sites such as YouTube. Most of them have already begun contacting other popular OTT services in India, like Hotstar, Sony LIV, Hoichoi, Eros Now, and Sun NXT. According to a poll conducted by Counterpoint Technology, Hotstar is the most popular OTT platform in India.
A proliferation of educational and entertaining (edutainment) alternatives for children: Our childhood days was built on the foundation of stories. India is one of the world’s oldest surviving cultures, and it is rich in morals, philosophy, sociology, imagination, and other subjects. Stories are sculpted into new formats in the digital age to suit the current palette and mould a whole new generation. According to a 2019 PricewaterhouseCoopers research, children made up more than 40% of new internet users worldwide in 2018. Every day, around 1,70,000 children access the internet.
Broadcasters in the children’s entertainment industry are capitalising on changing content consumption patterns to produce India-inspired characters and storylines that appeal to today’s youth. Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India published a study in 2019. The kid’s genre has a large market, and in addition to foreign companies such as POGO, Cartoon Network, and Discovery Kids, local Indian brands like VOOT Kids, Hungama Kids, and Zee5 Kids are vying for a piece of the pie. A bubble has occurred in the sphere of children’s education as a result of school closures, both temporary and permanent.
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