Streaming Wars: Hotstar Most Popular In India

Hotstar is India’s most popular OTT video platform, followed by Amazon’s Prime Video and SonyLIV, according to a market survey by Counterpoint Research. Although highly popular in metro cities, Netflix is ranked at No. 4 in the list in terms of the percentage of respondents subscribed to each platform.

Production house-backed local OTT players such as SonyLIV, Voot, Zee5, ErosNow, and ALTBalaji are also competing with foreign players such as Amazon’s Prime Video and Netflix.

“Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video were found to be highly popular in metros. Top 5 metros account for more than 65% users of these platforms. This was highest as compared to all other major platforms. These two platforms also have the highest penetration of salaried employees,” the report said.

With a sharp focus on cricket and content partnerships, local player Hotstar leads the OTT market at present. According to the survey, 56% of Hotstar’s users hail from metro cities. The platform also has the highest penetration of non-paying users.

SonyLIV scored the highest among Tier-I cities. More than 40% of SonyLIV users are from Tier I cities.

ErosNow has the highest percentage of its users consuming content on Smart TVs. A total of 27% of ErosNow users watch content on Smart TVs. ErosNow also remains the only major Indian OTT platform to partner with Apple for its’ new Apple TV+ service which will launch across the globe later this year. Further, the survey revealed that 9% of ErosNow’s users see content on the platform for more than 21 hours a week.

Among OTT users in India, Reliance Jio is the most popular network, followed by Airtel and Vodafone-Idea, said the survey.

In terms of demographics, about 90% of total Indian OTT users are under 35 years of age. Among young users, the age groups of 16-24 and 25-35 contributed equally to the overall market.

Overall, top 5 metro cities account for 55% of the total OTT video platform users, while Tier I cities account for another 36% of the users.―Livemint