Video consumption records 5X jump in India, smaller cities see over 4X jump: Hotstar

Consumption of online videos has registered five-fold growth over the past one year in India. Unlike past (during 2012-16) when short format videos used to attract more eyeballs, viewership of long-form videos (exceeding 20 minutes) had driven 96 per cent of overall usage, reveals OTT major Hotstar.

Hotstar’s India Watch Report 2018 reveals that metro cities recorded a 3.5 times increase in video streaming usage. However, the consumption in smaller cities (with a population in the range of 100K to a million) witnessed over 4 fold jump.

Cities like Moradabad, Allahabad, Hubli, and Sonipat are making big leaps, even above the overall national index growth. The massive growth in video viewership on the smartphone is largely driven by cheap data packs offered by Jio and other telecom companies.

Hotstar claimed to be the most downloaded video app with 170 million installs. The average Indian user consumes 1.6GB of data every month while engaged Hotstar users consume 3 GB data on a monthly basis.

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Notably, Hotstar apps claim that the rate of its app download per minute in the country is higher than babies born. Champions Trophy Final 2017 (India vs. Pakistan) was one of the most globally watched online videos in the shortest span of time. The mini world cup final match was recorded 113 million views in just 8 hours, mentions the report.

The OTT platform has crossed 1 billion minutes of watchtime in a single day, many times in 2017. Importantly, more than 90 percent of watchtime happened through smartphones. Samsung and Xiaomi emerged as the top two devices driving maximum viewership on Hotstar.

The viewership growth on the connected TV jumped 6 times in 2017 as compared to the previous calendar year. While the jump in video consumption by women from metro cities registered 2 times growth in 2017 over the previous year, smaller cities (less than 1 Mn population) witnessed a 3X spurt in consuming video content last year over 2016.

Surprisingly, 25 per cent of watchtime for Telugu movies comes from North and West India. Meanwhile, 30 per cent of show watchers in Tamil Nadu watch Hindi TV shows.

A quick snapshot of OTT space in India

Indian online video industry is expected to touch $1.6 billion in revenue by 2022, from the estimated $340 million in 2017, as per media research and consulting firm Media Partners Asia (MPA). Over the past two years, OTT space in India has been crowded as many players jumped on video streaming bandwagon.

Besides Amazon, Netflix and Hotstar, Alibaba and Facebook are also slated to enter video streaming market soon.

In 2016, global online video streaming leaders including Netflix and Amazon Prime had made their entry into Indian market while Voot (Viacom 18) and OZee (Zee TV) and ALT Balaji are also eyeing to grab a slice of fast-growing video consumption on the back of low-cost smartphones and cheap data packs.

With OTT offerings Alibaba eyes at entertainment-centric short video space (less than 20 minutes). While Facebook has also announced to launch its original video offering ‘watch’ by March this year.

The report can be downloaded here.