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.
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 Money hwist, Inside edge has increased popularity of Netflix or Prime 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 web-series which were very much popular among the youth in India and only these web-series have become a source of interest in original series by the people.
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 personalized content to the audience.