The pricing of OTT platforms in India is not very aggressive:Shailesh Kapoor

The Media & Entertainment has evolved a lot during the pandemic period; many people from the industry have gotten into streaming and exposure to regional languages content has increased. The pandemic has broken the barriers of language and regional integration and acceptance of regional content across the country has increased. 

OTT platforms took over the entire entertainment industry even as television struggled for content when the pandemic struck the country and strict lockdown was imposed. Now with normalcy returning, the question is how do the OTT platforms strategise to continue the momentum of the peak pandemic period and what will the future look like.

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Ormax Media, which recently completed 13 years, has been constantly innovating to introduce new tools and build knowledge that can help the Indian media & entertainment industry use consumer insights and data analytics to create businesses, brands, shows, films and campaigns that are both consumer-centric and profitable.

In an exclusive video interview with Adgully, Shailesh Kapoor, Founder-CEO, Ormax Media, shares his insights on how the entertainment and media landscape has changed due to the pandemic, how the OTT platforms have taken over the entertainment space, sustaining this momentum and much more.

While speaking on Ormax Media’s journey so far, Kapoor said, “It’s been 13 years now since we started in 2008. The idea was to fill in the need gap of providing consumer insights in research, which is very deep and specialised in the media and entertainment industry. There were research companies’ verticals dedicated to the media sector, but no company was working deep into it. For example, companies that work on television should talk about the ratings and grades, and when you work at a film company, you should talk about the language of the box office. When started, initially television was easy and cooperative as compared to the film industry. Over time we branched into films, radio, print and digital. OTT and digital have become a big part in the last five years.”

Continuing further, he said that in the last 5-6 years, Ormax Media had moved away from being a research company to more of an analytics and consulting company.

While speaking on the tremendous growth spike that OTT has seen during the pandemic period, Kapoor remarked that the new subscriber growth in OTT platforms was more in 2020 than in 2021. At the same time, he felt that once subscribers came in, the pricing of OTT platforms in India is not very aggressive.

“Most of the platforms – except Netflix, which also has a mobile plank now – are priced fairly economically. So, once you have a subscriber, it is not very difficult to retain the subscriber in general. Obviously, some of it depends on sports, like there is a chunk of subscribers who come on board only for IPL and then they may go away after the IPL is over. Of course, now with Hotstar moving to annual plans, that may no longer be an option. In general, sustenance is easy, but getting new subscribers over time will be a function of how deep the OTT category can go.”

He further said that the story of Internet in India is very positive. “Digital overall is doing well – YouTube is really big, Internet connectivity is good in India and is picking up in rural areas as well with reduction in data costs. However, the real challenge will be how far we can grow the SVOD audience,” Kapoor added.

Watch the complete session below:

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