Tribune News Service
Vijay C Roy
Chandigarh, October 20
Over the top (OTT) market is growing rapidly in India and often Indian OTT viewers struggle to keep up with the latest content by juggling multiple platforms since it is not possible for everyone to subscribe to each major platform separately.
The OTT industry, which has over 50-55 odd players offering original content in all languages, is growing fast and consistently especially after the Covid pandemic. Out of these, only a few of them provide free services. Most of them offer a monthly or yearly subscription plan.
Over 50 players offering content
- Players such as Airtel Xstream, Tata Play Binge, OTTPlay and Times Prime are offering bundled subscriptions, which is a combination of subscriptions that are curated at a lower price for the customer
- The latest to join the bandwagon is Watcho, the OTT entertainment solution by Dish TV, which is expanding its offering by providing bundled packages of the OTT platforms
Coming to the rescue of the subscribers, many players such as Airtel Xstream, Tata Play Binge, OTTPlay and Times Prime are offering bundled subscriptions, which is a combination of subscriptions that are curated at a lower price for the customer. The latest to join the bandwagon is Watcho, the OTT entertainment solution by Dish TV, which is expanding its offering by providing bundled packages of the OTT platforms. It is providing its subscribers with a whole new world of digital content along with the convenience of a single subscription.
Sukhpreet Singh, corporate head (marketing), DishTV & Watcho, Dish TV India Ltd., said, “OTT industry is brimming with multiple OTT apps, which leave the consumers struggling to search for the preferred content. To address these consumer challenges, we are introducing the Watcho OTT aggregation service that will augment the overall digital content consumption at an affordable price point. With this, we want to democratise the accessibility of various OTT platforms from a single platform.”
According to CII-BCG report titled ‘Blockbuster Script for a New Decade’, India had 70-80 million paid subscribers of OTT platforms at the end of 2021, up from 14 million in 2018 and just 0.5 million in 2014-15.
Amit Dhanuka, executive vice-president, Lionsgate, said, “With the ever-evolving OTT space in India, app bundling plays an important role to help brands reach a wider consumer base and will continue to do so in the future as well.”
According to industry experts, the bundled subscriptions not only save money, but also make it easier to buy preferred subscriptions under one package for one effective price.
Sourjya Mohanty, COO, EPIC ON, said, “The digital ecosystem is constantly evolving, and so are the consumers. In today’s market, one needs to be present across platforms and aggregation is increasingly playing an important role in helping users to find what to watch.”
Companies also benefit greatly from these OTT bundled subscriptions because they can onboard a large number of customers at significantly lower costs, and their retention is positive because they return for more such OTT renewal subscriptions.
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