Young Indians in metros driving OTT market, finds survey

Indians under 35 years of age accounted for 89% of OTT video content platform users, according to Counterpoint Research’s India OTT Video Content Market Consumer Survey released on Wednesday. Among young users, the age groups of 16-24 and 25-35 contributed equally to the overall market. Male users account for 79% of total users.

Overall, the top five metros accounted for 55% of OTT video platform users, while Tier I cities accounted for another 36% of users.

According to the survey, Hotstar leads the Indian OTT video content market, followed by Amazon’s Prime Video, SonyLIV, Netflix, Voot, Zee5, ALTBalaji, and ErosNow 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 competing with foreign players such as Amazon’s Prime Video and Netflix. The market remains highly focused on the ad-based model (AVOD), where advertisements drive revenues. However, subscription-based market (SVOD) continues to grow significantly.

In terms of engagement, the Counterpoint Research survey found ErosNow users were the most engaged users, with 68% indicating that they watched content on the platform daily.

The platform continues to thrive through partnerships. In India, it partnered with Xiaomi for pre-installation on smart TVs. 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 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 watch content on the platform for more than 21 hours a week. This is the highest among all OTT platforms in India.

In terms of overall market demographics, Counterpoint found that salaried employees were the largest consumer group of OTT users, followed by students, business owners, housewives, and others.

More than one-third of the respondents indicated that they were inclined to use free services, while another third indicated that they were paying for the subscription. Remaining respondents were either on trial period or indicated that their friend or family paid the subscription cost.

The smartphone is the most popular device for OTT video content consumption. Xiaomi is the most popular smartphone brand among OTT users. Reliance Jio is the most popular network among OTT users in India, followed by Airtel and Vodafone-Idea.

The most preferred languages for video content are Hindi and English. Among regional languages, Telugu was found to be most popular, followed by Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi and Tamil.

Action and comedy are the most preferred genres. While preference for action was highest among male users, drama and romantic genre content was found to be most popular among female users.

The survey also analysed OTT video content platforms and found that local player Hotstar was the leader at present, with a sharp focus on cricket and content partnerships. According to the survey, 56% of Hotstar’s users hail from metro cities. The platform also has the highest penetration of non-paying users.

Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video were found to be highly popular in metros. The top five metros account for more than 65% users on these platforms. This was highest among all major platforms. These two platforms also have the highest concentration of salaried employees.

However, SonyLIV scores highest among Tier I cities. More than 40% of SonyLIV users are from these cities.

Voot has the greatest reach among female users. It also has the highest reach among users aged 16-24 years.

ALTBalaji scored the highest among 25-35 age group users, who account for 59% of its users. Also, the platform is highly popular in Kolkata, with more than one-third of its users from that city. This was the highest among all major platforms.

ErosNow has the largest share (59%) of its users in the 25-39 age bracket in Tier II/III cities, the highest among all major OTT platforms.