Indians spent billions of minutes on OTT platforms: Report

Indians spent 188 billion minutes on various OTT platforms, the highest being 69 billion minutes on daily soaps and 31 billion minutes on movies in February, says a report by Bengaluru-based market research firm RedSeer. It highlighted that free telecom bundling helped increase the number of OTT subscriptions through smartphone users.

Nikhil Dalal and Ujjwal Chadhury, analysts at RedSeer, pointed out that with users not willing to step out of their houses, production houses of mainstream movies and OTT platforms started releasing new content online along with producing more originals as demand kept increasing.

The report stated that many of the post-paid users opted for bundling options provided by their telecom operator as it benefits them in varying ways. “Even broadband operators like JioFibre provide bundling options for free Prime and Netflix subscriptions. Moreover, with discounts and offers on various players, users tend to opt for annual subscription packs.”

It said while the unique paid user growth rate was logged at 35% in February 2021, compared to April 2020, subscriptions increased by 8% during the same period. The subscription revenue, as per the report, also increased significantly 42% in February. “Compared to last April, there has been a watch-time drop of 6% in February, mostly because engagement dropped as users started moving out with normalcy returning and their favourite TV soaps started again. However, the good news is with more releases in the pipeline along with product improvement, the engagement is likely to increase,” it said.

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The report highlighted that Voot dominated the daily soaps genre compared to its rivals, while others together grabbed 31% share. Hotstar dominated the movies genre with 33% share. It has to be brought to the fore that that launch of Hotstar+Disney, Voot Select and multiple regional SVoD platforms like HoiChoi and SunNXT, together with the rise in Smart TV users has brought this growth.