With 300 Mn MAU, Hotstar claims to be largest video platform in World

Star India-owned Hotstar has now become one of the largest video platforms, with over 300 million monthly active user (MAU), in the world, according to chairman of Star and Disney India Uday Shankar.

Shankar, during a presentation to Disney investors last week, revealed about the active users number on the platform and strategy that made it number one OTT platform in a span of four years.

According to Shankar, Hotstar kept mobile and Android in particular at the centre of its strategy, and created an app that was high quality, feature rich and also light and nimble.

Simultaneously, the company also made TV programming available on the app.

At present, Hotstar accounts for 40 per cent of all long-form digital video consumed in India. The streaming app is home to over 100,000 hours of drama, movies, sports and news content.

He further said that for every 4 hours of TV watched in India, one hour is on Star. Star claims a 65 per cent share of the sports viewership in India.

Keeping the Indian population in mind, Shankar claimed to work on making Hotstar scalable and later come up with a scaled advertising platform. To engage viewers on the platform, Hotstar brought initiatives such as social experience around videos and in-app transactions.

These initiatives lead to double the engagement of active users on Hotstar, Shankar was quoted as saying by exchange4media report.

He also believes that now is the right time to push for a subscription product.

We are on the path to use Hotstar’s massive scale as an AVOD platform to establish compelling SVOD service for the top-end consumers, he said.

Till mid-July last year, Hotstar is reported to have around 7 lakh paid subscriptions. Entrackr's queries regarding their latest subscribers number are yet to elicit a response from Hotstar.

In India, OTT content market is expected to reach $5 billion in the next four years, as per BCG report. Hotstar has been ruling the OTT space ever since its arrival in 2015. In the OTT space, it competes with players such as Jio TV, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Zee5 and AltBalaji among many others.

In the last year Kalagato report on OTT space, Hotstar emerged as number one OTT platform with 40 per cent of market share active users on its platform.

Through exclusive right with BCCI for broadcasting IPL and streaming entire portfolio of Star TV serial and originals, Hotstar has managed to hit the top line of Rs 571 crore last year.

The video streaming platform aims to clock over 18 million subscribers by 2021.