At a time when most people across the world are staying indoors to arrest the spread of deadly COVID-19, MX Player, an on-demand video streaming service owned by India’s Times Internet, has played a strategic hand, expanding overseas to a dozen new markets. The move comes at a perfect time as more and more people binge on video-on-demand services to keep themselves entertained during lockdowns.
Karan Bedi, CEO of the company, informed TechCrunch that the expansion had been in works for a while now, with testing going on in several markets for the past few months.
The streaming service will be expanding to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh and Nepal, as well as to the U.S. and the UK and like it does in India, the content will be provided free of cost while generating the revenue from ads- a pretty annoying way to earn money one may say.
“We believe in meeting this rapidly rising demand from discerning entertainment lovers with stories that strike a chord. To that end, we have collaborated with some of the best talent and content partners globally who will help bring us a step closer to becoming the go-to destination for entertainment across the world,” said Nakul Kapur, Business Head for International markets at MX Player, in a statement.
Bedi also informed the platform won’t be offering original titles in the newly expanded markets for now, as it does in India. But that aspect is being worked on at the moment. The service has also introduced free music streaming on the platform through Gaana, another subsidiary of the Times Internet conglomerate, as well as in-app casual games.
MX Player has generated a lot of fondness among the Indian masses ever since it came out in 2011, for its easy to use UI as well as ability to play almost all audio and video formats, a feature not available in other similar apps at that time.
