India's digital media sector to see a transformative year in 2018

Cheap 4G handsets and falling data prices led to a surge in data consumption on mobile devices last year, resulting in high user acquisitions for digital media and entertainment start-ups.

With high-speed data connectivity finally becoming a reality in india, analysts are anticipating a transformation of sorts for India’s digital media and entertainment startup sector.

Their high predictions: a spate of consolidations among video-streaming platforms; more investments by international music apps here; and a pick-up in subscription-based and mobile advertising revenues.

Cheap 4G handsets and falling data prices led to a surge in data consumption on mobile devices last year, leading to high user acquisitions for digital media and entertainment startups including video-streaming platforms and music-streaming apps.

“(Over-the-top, or OTT) players like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Hotstar can solely get larger,” said Jehil Thakkar, a partner at Deloitte india.

But “with over a dozen players within the area, one can expect consolidation and a few players exiting in 2018. Also, serious investments by the large players in original programming and regional content can take place as subscriptions grow.”

In an interaction with ET in October, Greg Greeley, vice-president of Amazon Prime, said india had a lot of folks observance Amazon Prime videos throughout the primary year of its launch here, as compared with the platform’s launch year in different countries. the company hiked its annual subscription price from ₹499 to ₹999 recently.

As for international music-streaming apps, analysts expect Apple Music and Spotify can invest a lot of in user acquisition in india this year. Last year, Apple Music employed former executive editor of Rolling Stone, Bobin James, because the editor of Apple Music, based mostly in delhi. Spotify employed Akshat Harbola as the head of its Republic of India operations.

“Apple Music created little investments within the Indian market and indie artists in 2017. Spotify and others will look a lot of closely at india as more users log on to music streamingapps from completely different components of the country,” said the co-founder of a digital content platform, declining to be identified.

Analysts and entrepreneurs attribute the spurt in users across digital platforms to the entry of Reliance Jio, that disrupted the telecom industry with cheaper access to high-speed data and forced other telecom firms to follow suit with similar offers.

Gaurav Gandhi, the chief in operation officer of Viacom 18 Digital Ventures, during an interaction last year said Jio and different telcos and also the introduction of 4G data contributed to the surge in users, together with for Viacom 18’s OTT platform Voot.

“We have over doubled our monthly active user base to over 25 million users within the past six months, with the highest forty cities contributory close to seventieth of the viewership,” said Gandhi. Also, more than 25th of digital media consumption came from regional language audiences, he said.

Similarly, according to music streaming app Gaana, the company saw a 3x growth in monthly active users during the half of 2017 and contributes the growth to Jio and cheaper data costs.

“We currently have regarding 50 million monthly active users that stream close to 1.3 billion songs on a monthly basis, we've seen an enormous growth last year and expect to see a growing quantity of traction from tier-II and tier-III cities this year,” said Prashan Agarwal, COO of Gaana to ET. Gaana is part of Times net, a subsidiary of bennett Coleman & Co (BCCL), the publisher of this newspaper.