The last two days have been very active in the Indian OTT market. For today’s scoop, Amazon has just uncurtained a lineup of over 40 titles, both self-produced and co-produced, in Indian Regional languages (Hindi, Tamil and Telugu). They also announced a brand new movie rental service, which is now live to all Amazon prime users.
The move comes after a massive vaccum has been revealed in the entertainment market attributing to Netflix’s struggle to connect with the audience in recent times. The information was revealed in a star-studded event in Bombay, which prominently featured prominent Bollywood director and producer, Karan Johar. This is what Saurav Gandhi, Country Head at Amazon Prime India, had to say,
In the last 5 years, we have built a strong slate of locally produced content across languages, super-serving the diverse entertainment needs of Indian customers. With increased access and distribution, we have helped these great stories travel far and wide in India, and around the world.
~Saurav Gandhi, Country Head, Amazon Prime India
While not much information is available in the public domain regarding what the new titles are going to be, it is confirmed that they will include works of famous Indian filmmakers Rohit Shetty, Zoya Akhtar and, quite obviously, Karan Johar.
India has moved well past the traditional movie rental system, with a few people remembering the excitement of renting that fresh VCD from the one store the town used to have. (Probably not our target audience in that age demographic). Amazon Prime’s new Transactional Video-on-demand (TVOD) service will reportedly give users early access to new movies.
Amazon has been very enthusiastically moving capital towards the Indian market, with their current tally standing at a massive $6.5 Billion. They recently acquired rights to streaming a small amount of cricket games in India, and are expected to contend in the bidding war for the blockbuster cricket league IPL’s broadcasting rights contract, scheduled for next year. They are all set to compete with another up-and-comer in the market in the form of Viacom 18, which also recently raised a hefty funding for an OTT platform.
