Tata Play broadens OTT platform access beyond DTH subscribers

Tata Play will be expanding its OTT aggregation app ‘Tata Play Binge’ to non-DTH subscribers. Tata Play launched its OTT aggregation platform nearly three years ago, however, users needed a Tata Play DTH subscription to use this service on their television sets.

Now, everyone can access the aggregator platform. Tata Play Binge will offer 27, national, regional, and international OTTs in 13 languages. These include Disney+Hotstar, ZEE5, SonyLIV, Jio Cinema, Hallmark, MX Player, and many more.

Apple TV integration
Netflix and Amazon Prime are conspicuously absent from the OTT lineup. However, Tata Play CEO, Harit Nagpal added that the group is in discussions with both Netflix and Prime to potentially draft commercial agreements for integration into the OTT aggregator.

Nagpal added that Apple TV will soon be integrated into Tata Play Binge. The company has completed commercial integration and is formally integrating the app on the back end.

Binge’s introduction into the mass market is in line with Tata Group’s broader strategy to provide a stronger portfolio of digital products. The group debuted its super-app ‘Tata Neu’ last year with Neu to blend its wide array of products in e-commerce to financial services in one digital banner.

Besides Tata Play Binge, other OTT aggregation apps available in India include OTTplay, YuppTV, and Scope. Nagpal believes that more major brands need to introduce OTT aggregation services to grow the burgeoning market.

‘Accessing all content’
As more and more people start subscribing to more than two-three OTT platforms, the need for an integrator that segments and parses show amongst all these platforms for the user becomes indispensable.

“With Binge, you pay only once for the family’s consumption of content from 22 apps for ₹249 per month and 27 apps for ₹349 per month and access all the content from these apps on one app, arranged as per your language and genre preference,” Nagpal said.

This comes even as the DTH industry has been under pressure over the last two years as users shift to online streaming services. Tata Play is the largest DTH player in the country. The Hindu BusinessLine