By: Yohan P Chawla
The recent changes in the eco-system have really boosted not only the consumption of but also the outlook for OTT in India. Be it the overflow of data at 4G speeds or the sale of smart television sets at very affordable prices or the screen casting devices such as Google Chromecast or Amazon Firestick which led to the sudden increase in the number of screens people in the country use. All these factors have given an impetus to the OTT industry and played an important role in boosting the confidence of, and helping, various OTT platforms to grow.
Sony Pictures Networks’ OTT platform Sony LIV, on Friday, 25th January 2019, completed 6 years in the Indian MARKET, and shared its growth story, and the roadmap ahead.
Sony LIV, after all this while, has finally made its play into original content. However, its slate of original content will be ready by end of March, start of April this year, which, incidentally, is also when the first of the content originals from Hotstar Specials, will be hitting the ubiquitous small screens. SonyLiv are betting big on regional content and plan to create content in Tamil, Telegu, Marathi and Bengali.
As per the FICCI Media and Entrainment report, by 2020, India is expected to become the second largest video-viewing audience globally. The growth of Internet users is estimated to reach 829 Million by 2021.
The digital video market in India is growing at a rapid pace and is expected to be sized at about 500 million by the year 2020.
I caught up with Uday Sodhi, Business Head – Digital, Sony Pictures Networks India to talk about SONY LIV’s current performance and their play on original content in the year 2019.
Speaking on Sony LIV’s growth Sodhi said, “We have now become a very large entertainment destination. 100 new consumers are downloading our app every minute, its going at a pace which was unbelievable. This number is almost 3x of what it was last year. Our sheer number of downloads is up. The pace at which new downloads are happening is up. In terms of monthly active users we are 3x up in comparison with 2017.”
Sodhi, said, “A lot of growth is coming from small towns as compared to the big metro cities. We have seen 4x growth in small towns and 3x growth in major metro cities. Going forward we will see more and more content being created for that segment.
“While we grew 3x in users we grew 7x in consumption. It’s not about just coming on the platform, but staying on the app.”
No absolute numbers were shared.
“We are feeding two things, one is we are feeding the growth of metros through a lot of sports and English and then there is big India out there to which we are feeding television content and short films, food and health content and a lot of originals which we will now create in very specific regional languages such as Tamil, Telegu, Marathi and Bengali.”
The platform has always been big on its sports offerings and clocked in 70 million users for the Fifa World Cup 2018. The recent India’s tour to Australia saw 50 million users and the tour to England saw 30 million users on the platform.
A major content piece on the platform consists of the catch-up television available from SPN’s broadcast channels. Stepping up the game for consumer engagement and interactivity, SONY LIV brought KBC play along, Live voting for its non-fiction talent hunt reality shows, augmented reality powered feature which allowed viewers to take a selfie with comedian Kapil Sharma and allowed music enthusiasts to sing along with their favourite Indian Idol contestants. For fitness freaks the platform has health and fitness content.
In their January content catalogue the platform has launched some global shows such as The Good Doctor, Handmaid’s Tale season 2 among others. Understandably all premium English content is accessible only to the premium subscribers.
Commenting on whether the New Tariff Order (NTO) would impact the life of the OTT platforms, Sodhi said, “With the new TRAI Tariff order, life for OTT will be the same because people won’t stop watching their favourite shows so we don’t expect a boost in OTT consumption solely because of the NTO.”
While SonyLiv didn’t share absolute numbers, here’s a quick catchup on those of some others — shared by the platforms themselves: Zee5, which has been very aggressive with original content from its launch phase, recently reported a growing 50 MN monthly active users, whereas Hotstar, which has recently announced its original content offerings, is leading the pack with 150 MN monthly active users. Viacom18’s Voot also has been in the news for its original content offerings and has close to 50 MN monthly active users.
One waits to see how Sony LIV’s original content offering would first, cut through the noise of original content, and reach out to its viewers, and secondly, contribute to its monthly active users and time spent.
With the Sony might and a good professional team behind it, they should do well. What’s certain, however, is that the Indian OTT consumer will be further spoiled for choice.
