Tata Play Binge offers PaaS to go global

Mumbai: Direct-to-home service provider Tata Play (formerly Tata Sky), which also offers over-the-top aggregation services, announced on Wednesday the launch of Tata Play Binge PaaS (platform as a service), a white label solution for OTT aggregators globally.

The company will be managing its end-to-end technology platform over the cloud to offer services to international players seeking to streamline their OTT content distribution operations.

Tata Play Binge, the aggregator platform was launched in 2020 only for DTH customers and extended to non-DTH users earlier this year.

Tata Play managing director and chief executive Harit Nagpal said the company signed its first agreement with Philippines’ leading pay-TV provider, Cignal TV, to offer Binge PaaS.

“All our efforts have always been keeping in mind customers’ needs. As a DTH player, we looked at offering hassle-free and quality service. With more and more OTT platforms coming up, we realised customers would need one aggregator. So we started work on Binge five years ago. We made mistakes and corrected them and it took us some time to perfect it. Now we are in a position to offer this platform as a service, and global players can use it at a fraction of the cost to launch an aggregator app in months,” Nagpal told Mint.

The company will look after the end-to-end development and deployment opportunities, and will share its learnings with the partner companies to forge commercial partnerships, recommendation engines, subscription management, and analytics, as well as providing the software architecture, he added.

“We were keen on an OTT aggregation product as a natural evolution of our service and recognize the success of Tata Play Binge in this space as a model to follow. We are in advanced stages to finalise our engagement targeting go-to-market in less than a year,” said Jane J Basas, president and chief executive officer, Cignal TV.

At the heart of Tata Play’s aggregator solution is the aim to simplify the viewer’s experience. Users will have the convenience of accessing content from multiple OTT platforms through a single application and subscription, neatly presented on a single screen.

“This is our first partnership and we are in talks with 11 more potential partners in different markets for similar deals,” said Nagpal. “Almost everyone I met internationally is struggling to make aggregator apps. That’s why we thought of sharing the software architecture. We can handle the hosting and technical infrastructure for a small fee, which is a fraction of what they would have to pay to build an app, while they can focus on content and deals.”

Tata Play will deal with only one player in any market, said Nagpal. In India, Binge offers its users access to 28 national, regional and global apps spanning 13 languages, including popular platforms Apple TV+, Disney+ Hotstar, SonyLIV, Jio Cinema and ZEE5.

Earlier this year, Tata Play, a joint venture with Walt Disney got Securities and Exchange Board of India’s nod to launch its initial public offering (IPO).