OTT and its meteoric rise , in India !

Most of us cannot deny the fact that we are slowly but surely getting hooked on Hotstar, Amazon Prime, Netflix , SonyLiv, Zee5 , Voot, hoichoi – the rage that is OTT today, also a term only a few consumers may know the full form of, even now!

OTT or Over-The-Top media services have been able to corner a huge market for themselves, particularly over the last 2 years of the pandemic, when movie theaters were shut, people could go out only for emergencies and were struggling to keep boredom out of their life under lockdown.

While it seemed that the OTT craze will wane away along with the pandemic that has not happened. OTT has caught on, it’s everywhere, and it’s here to stay!

Here’s my observation on a few points that are driving this huge consumption of OTT in India:

? Individualization – OTT platforms allow the creation of multiple ‘profiles’ where individual members of a family can watch and save the shows or content of their choice.?Also consumption of media & entertainment today is a more personal experience than Family viewing .

? Diversity of language – Indians have the option of watching movies in different languages with the help of subtitles and audio-changing options.?In fact on OTT , the avg nos of languages watched is 4 in India . Lots of exciting movies from South are now getting consumed across the nation , with audio dubbing & sub titles , often courtesy OTT platforms , the distribution is increasing .

? Niche content – OTT platforms are open to displaying smaller projects by indie producers & directors, leading to a huge volume of niche content - of interest to a variety of micro audiences.?

? Creative boundaries – The content on OTT is not limited to a traditional approach. New choices are explored and creative boundaries are pushed or rather broken.?May be also the fact that some of the original content is not exactly under Film Scrutiny & Certification .

? International content – Due to the boom in social media consumption, people are increasingly getting exposed to international and even non-English content. This has led to the unprecedented popularity and success of shows like Money Heist (Spanish) and Squid Game (Korean).?

? Last, but not least, India is a country with one of the cheapest mobile data tariffs in the world. Combining this with the boom in smartphone penetration across urban and rural, we have a huge population consuming media and OTT from their mobile phones. This is indeed one of the top reasons why OTT has grown so much.