Is the sharing business platform viable in the long run?
Can the platforms go ahead when there are creative differences over content?
In Shakespeare’s play titled The Tempest, the bard makes a unique observation: Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
Many players international and Indian platforms are in a day to day fight to win over users or get new subscribers. Many of these Indian platforms began a sharing model to provide more options or quality content for the users.
‘Enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ seems to be the saying going around in Indian OTT space. To combat Netflix and Prime Video upsurge various Indian OTT platforms have decided to join hands together.
ZEE5 partnered with Alt Balaji for content syndication and co-production, MX-Player joined hands with Sony Liv, Arré and Hoichoi, while Hotstar has a content tie up with Hooq. Keeping a subscription model to attract users and providing quality content is a very costly business as it can lead to rupturing their profits. With this strategy of joining hands in the OTT content, it can help the parent companies to manage profitability.
From just a handful of players in the Indian market the numbers have shot up beyond 30 with every major organization having an OTT platform. Top Indian broadcasters are following an ad-supported catch-up content, premium and sports content using the paywall strategy. With the ‘Jio Revolution’ in 2016 which slashed down data plans to bare minimum, OTT became a major player. Telcos have eyed this pie for a long but creating a quality content requires patience, which does not seem to be an Indian trait. Airtel, Vodafone and Jio are following an aggregator model with regard to OTT.
In 2017 Jio picked up 25% stake in Balaji Telefilms and that gave the telecommunication giant an access to the Alt Balaji content. The partnership required ALTBalaji to make its original shows available on Jio Cinema and Jio TV. Vodafone pushed its RED postpaid users with two months’ worth of free Netflix subscription and a year’s worth of Amazon Prime subscription while Vodafone Play app also housed content from Eros Now, ALTBalaji and HOOQ. Airtel tied-up with Amazon to offer one year’s Prime membership to all Airtel Infinity postpaid users and had a Netflix service for a limited period of three months to users with specific post-paid plans. It also signed a strategic partnership with Hotstar to give subscribers access to over 100,000 hours of Hotstar content across live sports, movies and television shows in nine languages on the Airtel TV app. Airtel also provides regional content, of Hoichoi TV.
The OTT platforms have to contend with both, content production and consumer acquisition costs, and these two are not cheaper as days pass by. The idea of joining hands was the need for survival, but now the question is for how long?
For the acclaimed shows like Game of Thrones, Silicon
Valley, Westworld, Veep, The Americans Hotstar subscribers had to put up with
flops which were remakes of American shows like Hostages, The Office (Indian
version) and Out of Love. Hotstar has never been able to match Netflix’s
genre-defining show Sacred Games. In fact, Netflix became the victim of Sacred
Games’ very own success which raised audience expectations dividing the second
season opinion and splitting the fans.
Hotstar got a shot in the arm when Disney head Bob
Iger officially announced the entry of Disney+ in India. In the year 2019,
Hotstar reported 300 million active users, but most of these users were free.
It is evident that to access the rich Disney content now, the user will only
have to avail themselves of the Hotstar Premium package.
The date set for Disney+ to set its content in the Indian
OTT space is March 29, coinciding with the kickoff of the 2020 edition of
Indian Premier League. Each passing month has intensified the streaming wars
globally while players like Netflix and Prime Video look at India as the source
of new subscribers.
With about
300 million users, Hotstar seems to have a larger share in the OTT space due to
its cricketing and footballing content. The platform also has the rights for
the HBO shows which are not only critically but universally liked and loved.
March 2020 will also see the third season of the show ‘Westworld’ on Hotstar,
which is likely to attract more eyeballs towards the app.
With a library of collections that includes Marvel
products, Star Wars and the access to various 20th Century Fox
productions, Disney+ is going to boost Hotstar’s appeal.
The question that constantly lurks in the mind of the user is which platform should he/she opt for in their spare time. Should they go for the international players like Netflix or Prime Video which allows the user to take a peek into the world of international movies and shows or the local platforms which is comparatively cheaper and contents closer to home.
India is the second largest smartphone market and OTT players home and abroad are vying for the piece of the pie. When Netflix made its presence in India in 2016, the platform gave a stiff competition for the already existing Hotstar. Soon more players mushroomed in India, local and international. India has emerged as the zone for battle for eyeballs because of the vast potential demographic. With the availability of cheap internet connections and the advent of 4G people were able to get the entertainment with just a swipe of their fingers.
International platforms like Netflix and Prime Video compete with several homegrown OTT players. They face their toughest competition from Hotstar which offers live streaming of cricket matches, especially those which feature India such as Premier League, ISL and Bundesliga matches in addition to movies, soap-operas, as well as content sourced from various sources including the acclaimed ‘Game of Thrones’, ‘Westworld, etc.
This has forced Netflix and Prime Video to focus not just on competitive pricing, but also start to lay emphasis on local language programming. One of Prime Video’s earliest Indian originals was Inside Edge (a show focused on cricket and Bollywood) while in 2019, Netflix released five original series and eight original films, including the Bard of Blood though the quality was questionable.
In spite of the best efforts of the above two, the Indian OTT platforms like Hotstar, MXPlayer, ALTBalaji, Voot, and ZEE5 find favour with Indian consumers. If one browses through the content catalogues of Indian platforms especially that of MX Player and Hoichoi, one can see they provide not only family-based content but also edgy content. The edgy content has only one target and that is the users between the age of 18-40. Cable TV is still a strong presence in Indian households especially with housewives. Though it has not been recognized in any official capacity, local OTT platforms do face stiff competition from cable TV.
International players like Netflix and Amazon Prime have raised the bar for homegrown OTT players in terms of quality content and pricing strategy. The homegrown OTT players have begun to target rural India with their regional content. The future of OTT seems to be heading towards a state of co-existence between the local and international content.
OTT has conquered Indian data space in a short time
The diverse nature of OTT consumers
The three tiers of OTT platforms
Look around you—everyone is hooked on watching something on
their screens now.
In
2018 there was a growth of OTT platforms which very quickly congested the
market while 2019 was the year that the OTT space exploded with original
content, new partnerships, and getting to know the consumer better. In a
diverse country like India, the content needs to be upgraded or improved upon
to retain eyeballs or the users will soon abandon the platform especially when
the free trial is over. With streaming banned in China, India has become the
hotbed for streaming platforms.
While Netflix is the first name that hits the spot in the streaming world for several consumers, other OTT services are catching and the main factor that define these brands is the content they deliver.
The
increasing seepage of mobile computing devices has been a significant factor in
driving the growth of over the top market. The availability of low-cost
smartphones, rising internet, and growing investments in communication network
infrastructure are responsible for the increase of mobile computing devices in
India. Mobile computing devices such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets have
become the preferred choice for accessing OTT platforms. This has encouraged
several market vendors to develop mobile apps for streaming OTT services
through mobile computing devices. These apps provide portability, easier
accessibility, and better connectivity than websites.
The Top OTT platforms in India till the end of 2019 (in no particular order):
Hostar
Netflix
Amazon Prime
ALT Balaji
Zee5
VOOT
SonyLIV
Viu
Hoichoi
As per user reviews regarding the above apps, Hotstar seems to have a higher percentage of downloads during a cricket season such as World Cup or IPL. The higher pricing structure of Netflix seems to drive out users. Netflix showed a higher percentage of users when Airtel provided three months of free viewing as part of their subscription plan. With Amazon Prime tying up with CBS Access, the viewers/fans of various US based TV shows like Star Trek: Picard, Mom, Young Sheldon, etc., find it preferable.
There has been a concentrated and steady effort by the new players in the OTT space to dislodge the monopoly enjoyed by the above-mentioned platforms. Some of these platforms are: MX Player, ShemarooMe, DocuBay, VOOT Kids, and Facebook Watch.
Few examples of OTTs losing users or failing to find users for the lack of new or better content are BigFlix and Eros Now. Post the porn-ban in India, there has been a slow rise of smaller OTT platforms with cheap production values, tacky scripts, and amateur actors whose focus is on providing titillation for the users. Alt Balaji platform is a trailblazer with this regard. Platforms like Ullu, HotShots Digital, Prime Flix and more have taken up the cue and are regularly producing new content for appealing to new and the retention of old users.
From
the content and the type of users the apps have, we can classify the Apps into
three tiers: Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3.
Tier 1:
The Tier 1 OTT platforms can be grouped as platforms that have a history of more than one million downloads and the updating of contents regularly. The contents also should appeal to a group of audience who have an interest in global TV entertainments. Platforms like Hotstar, Netflix, Amazon Prime will fall under these categories. With the launch of Apple TV, this platform can also be grouped under this category. The one exception that can be made is the inclusion of the platform Hoichoi, as consumers in urban cities have shown an interest in this platform.
As
per RedSeer Consulting report in August 2019, Hotstar had emerged the most
preferred OTT platform in India, with 41 per cent of the respondents picking it
compared to 26 per cent voting for Amazon Prime Video and 9 per cent for
Netflix. Hotstar boasted over 300 million subscribers, compared to 13 million
for Amazon Prime Video and 11 million for Netflix.
Hotstar,
with its flagship shows from HBO like Game of Thrones, Westworld, etc., has on
various occasions enjoyed a spike in downloads and viewership. With Westworld
as one of the top followed shows in India and with its third season premiere in
March, Hotstar will see a greater demand among the users. With Disney+ looking
to foray into the rich Indian market, post IPL in May, Hotstar seems to be in
prime position to get ahead of its competitors.
By
the middle of 2019, Hotstar had warded off competition from Netflix and Amazon
Prime to top the OTT charts.
Tier 2:
The
Tier 2 OTT platforms will contain platforms that cater to regional audiences or
an audience that enjoys a specific taste of entertainment. Zee5, Voot, Alt
Balaji, MX Player and others like the above would fall under this category. The
programs like movies, mini-series and originals are regularly updated but they
are not enjoyed by a wider audience due to the mature and amateur contents in
the program. Zee5 and Voot are mostly consumed by housewives or elderly members
in the family.
The
growth and ever expansion of Alt Balaji can be classified as a separate study
in itself. From the onset, Alt Balaji has shown that the target audience is the
rural and the male gender. One of its flagship web series is Gandi Baat which
is running into its fourth season. The series was launched inSeptember 2018 and the spike can be seen whenever the new
season of the show is released on the app.
Tier 3:
These
apps fly slightly under the radar and have attracted only a group of audience
that is interested in mature content. Ullu, HotShots Digital and Prime Flix can
be grouped under this category. The following apps update the contents almost
on a regular basis and this has helped in retention of the audience. Ullu app,
launched in 2018 has kept a steady stream of users throughout 2019. The growth
of HotShots digital is an interesting story. Not much news can be gleaned from
the web regarding the App, while on its website the location of office is in
Surrey. Apparently, the App was launched in 2019, and there seems to be a spike
in search for the app whenever a new content is added.
The field of OTT is not finite and
the list keeps growing with each passing year. Case in point the launch of
Mainstream TV (Google Play) and Saina Play, which specializes in Malayalam movies, web series,
and short films.
“Jojo Rabbit” is a feel-good film that uses comedy to deliver a powerful message.
Jojo Rabbit is a World War II comedy-drama film that tells the story of Jojo, a 10-year old member of the Hitler Youth Army. The boy hero worships Hitler so much so that he imagines Hitler to be his constant imaginary friend. Jojo is shocked when he discovers his mother Rosie hiding a young Jewish girl, Elsa in their own attic. Ultimately, he is forced to make a choice between love and hate.
The movie is based on Christine Leunen’s book Caging Skies.
Taika Watiti directed and wrote the screenplay. He was keen to make a Second World War film that had a stronger sense of design about it. Since it is a period movie, muted palette, sepia-toned or black white photographic visuals are the highlights of the movie.
Production Designer Ra Vincent crafted a stylish, baroque home setting for Jojo’s home and attic.
Scarlett Johansson effectively plays a single mother who is anti-Nazi.
The movie got positive reviews for the performances, visual style, and production values. But some criticized the comedic portrayal of Nazis.
Jojo Rabbit is nominated for six Academy Award categories:
Best Motion Picture: Carthew Neal, Taika Waititi, and Chelsea Winstanley
Best Production Design: Ra Vincent; Set Decoration: Nora Sopková
Best Adapted Screenplay: Taika Waititi, based on the novel Caging Skies by Christine Leunens
Best Film Editing: Tom Eagles
Best Actress in A Supporting Role: Scarlett Johansson, as Rosie Betzler, the single mother of Jojo Rabbit.
