Over-the-top (OTT) Services

An over-the-top (OTT) media service is a streaming media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms, the companies that traditionally act as a controller or distributor of such content.

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Examples include , Netflix, Prime Video,Hotstar, and YouTube Premium.

OTT (Over the Top) media services which offer direct streaming services to viewers, have been gaining popularity worldwide. The top rank in this field has been held by Netflix and Amazon Prime, which remain popular worldwide. However,In India the scenario is quite different for OTT industry. As per some reports , the Indian streaming platform Hotstar is the most popular OTT platform in India due to the live streaming of IPL and other major cricket matches then 2nd spot is taken by Amazon’s Prime Video for their popular series like mirzapur ,made in heaven etc and 3rd spot is held by sonyliv which mostly offers popular reality tv shows while Netflix ranks 4th and i know webseries like sacred games has increased popularity of netflix in india but still it ranks fourth due to their high pricing as compared to others.

The popularity of some OTT platforms have been increasing with the emerging of some Indian OTT platforms like ALTBALAJI, Voot,ULLU and these are directly giving competition to these major foreign players like netflix and amazon prime due to their Regional content and knowledge about what the Indian audience want to watch and in order to tackle or compete with these Indian OTT platforms.Netflix and Amazon had started to showing original series like Sacred games by Netflix and the family man by amazon prime which have receive overwhelming response and appreciated by the Indian audience

Reason behind increasing number of OTT platforms

The main reason behind so many new OTT platforms coming to the market is the increasing profits generated by such platforms in India.

Indian video OTT service to grow at 21.8% CAGR to reach $1.7 billion by 2023 from $638 million in 2018.

Subscription video on demand to grow at 23.3% CAGR to $1.5 b, 89.4% of overall revenues.

Indian OTT market to overtake South Korea to become the 8th biggest market in the world by 2023.With over 500 million mobiles users,this industy has been growing at the rate of 8% .

Challenges faced by OTT platform in India

These ott platform like netflix and amazon are quite popular outside india But the Indian market is not easy to understand that’s why netflix has suffered failure in india at the starting because they are not giving the relate able and original content to the Indian audience. In India, particularly the youth is tired of seeing repetitive drama and plot of TV soaps and their is a diverse population in India having different taste,different culture,different interest etc,it would become difficult for these ott platform to analyse what type of content produce for the Indian viewers but after analysing it get to know that Indian audience want more organic,more regional and more relate able content,and in the view of these things many OTT platforms are focusing on making original series according to their tastes as well as by providing regional language films also on their respective Apps.

Pricing

Another factor affecting the popularity of these ott platform are its respective pricing policy.Many of us know that netflix has suffered in india due to their pricing policy too .As,the other Indian players offers subscription at the affordable rate through it they manage to increase their market share.Some of them are even providing free content on their platform and due to that netflix has to change its subscription rate to takeover them.Now,Netflix is offering at 199/device through only that they are able to compete with these Indian ott platform and slowly increasing their market share

Popular webseries by different OTT platforms

These ott platforms have been gaining popularity due to some of their webseries which were very much popular among the youth in india and only these webseries have become a source of interest in original series by the people.Well,there are many ott platform having different webseries but i mention only few which are most popular among people of different ages.

Netflix–Sacred games,Money heist,Sex education

Amazon prime video-Mirzapur,Made in heaven

Hotstar-criminal justice,hostages

sonyliv-mainly popular for tv shows but have some webseries like gullak

AltBalaji-Gandi baat,Apaharan

voot select-Asur

In the era of digitalization and having the availability of affordable data and love for digital content by indian audience there is increase in these platform from the past 1-2 year and also these platform are also focuses more on original content which quite become a successful factor for these ott platform to make the webseries popular among youth and these platform also spend more on advertising because the competition has become tough and it interesting to see what kind of strategies these OTT platforms will follow in order to attract more audiences to their http://channels.In the next 4-5 years India will see significant growth in media and entertainment industry and these ott platform will play a major role in that by providing original and personalised content to the audience.

There are in all 3 OTT platforms that are playing on loop on my screen one after the other.

1. Netflix: I don’t think in today’s time anybody can go without Netflix. Especially when there is a lockdown and need some new or some old movies/series to binge watch. When it comes to netflix there is a huge variety of shows to watch. Friends, big bang theory, 100, sacred games, and not to forget the Korean series. The list never stops. Must have app.
2. Voot: Voot is a local app. So for serials like Roadies and Bigg boss seasons, splitsvilla tc I opt for Voot. Although it also has a plethora of thriller series like crackdown, asur, criminal injustice etc. You will also find many bollywood movies which are not available on Netflix. Do check out
3. Amazon Prime: One other advantage of this app is you get orders in 1 day. Apart from this Netflix does not have Office. This serial is a must watch. Jack ryan and how can anyone forget, Mirzapur!!. I think in nowadays I hardly remember myself watching tv.

These apps also give your family good, genuine shows with good acting and story to watch. Now a days other channels on TV lack stories. And many well-known actors are now opting for these OTT platforms

End-to-end OTT solution provider

What would you like to have in your OTT platform? Do you want to build a video streaming or audio streaming platform? How many subscribers do you think will be streaming through your platform? How much bandwidth do you require? Which CDN service will help you scale?

I know you must be hitting your head hard with a lot of questions like this.

Well, Muvi can help you out with all your answers. If you are planning to build your own OTT service, wouldn’t you be interested to calculate your ROI?

As far as I know, Muvi is the world’s only end-to-end OTT solution provider that allows you to build a world-class, fully-featured and your own branded video streaming platform like Netflix or audio streaming platform like Spotify in a single day. Isn’t it exciting?

Muvi is the world’s most customizable & fastest deployable OTT platform. With more than 500+ features, Muvi combines the world’s latest and greatest technologies like Amazon AWS, Most powerful HTML5 video/audio Player, highly secured built-in CDN & many more to power up your OTT platform to catch up the scale at the earliest.

 

1.) Voot: Voot is a video-on-demand platform that is a part of the digital arm of Viacom18. It has a pool of 45,000 hours of content which includes – COLORS (Hindi), MTV, Nickelodeon, Viacom18 Motion Pictures and MTV Indies.

2.) ALT Balaji: ALT Balaji is an ad-free subscription based service which is a product of film and television production house, Balaji Telefilms Ltd. It provides 32 original shows in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, and Gujarati at a subscription price of Rs.300 per year.

4.) Amazon Prime Video: India accounts for the highest number of Prime members in the debut year, growing fastest among the 16 countries that the platform is present on.

5.) Hotstar: It has swiftly become one of the largest video-on-demand platforms in the country. It is the only service with content partnerships with the top three global studios – HBO, Fox, and Disney.

6.) Netflix: While most of the OTT service platforms follow a mix of advertising-led and subscription fee-based business models, Netflix, in keeping with its global strategy is free of advertising In India.

 

With the advent of Smart TVs, the entertainment providers are leveraging the strong points of these devices to expand the reach of their programs. The TV channels that were the forerunners of home entertainment are now coming to digital platforms and are running OTT video on demand services too. There are certain applications that are developed only for the internet and bring the consumers the convenience of entertainment on their internet connected devices. These applications are:

1. Netflix

2. Amazon Prime

3. ALT Balaji

4. Disney Hotstar

5. Voot

6. Zee5

7. SonyLIV

8. YouTube

9. MX Player

10. Mubi

 

 

 

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