Hotstar leads Indian online content space, Dailyhunt, MX Player follow: report

New Delhi: The online content industry in India is dominated by Hotstar, the video streaming service owned by the Star network, followed by news aggregator Dailyhunt and MX Player, the OTT platform owned by Times Internet.

The rankings are part of findings by RedSeer, a Bangalore-based research and consulting firm, that released monthly active user numbers for 15 content players in the Indian industry including news aggregators and short-form content, OTT (over-the-top) video and music streaming players.

At 300 million, Hotstar leads the race followed by Dailyhunt that has 190 million monthly active users and MX Player at 176 million. Chinese social media video streaming player, Tik Tok is fourth in the list at 129 million while audio streaming player Gaana owned by Times Internet follows at 110 million (also largest in the audio streaming category) after which comes Saavn (acquired by Reliance Jio) at 92 million.

"Nothing unites our country like cricket. Every time there is a World Cup or any other sizeable cricket tournament, we see a very high activity on these content platforms, people don't just want to watch matches, they also want to read and talk about it." says Ujjwal Chaudhry, director, RedSeer Consulting, in a statement.

To be sure, Hotstar owns rights to popular sporting leagues such as the IPL (Indian Premier League), World Cup, kabaddi, tennis and other tournaments that possibly accounts for its popularity.

American video streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix are further down in the list with 13 million and 11 million monthly active users respectively.