Hotstar Leads India’s OTT Market, But Women Are Not Streaming Enough Content

India’s OTT market is overly dominated by male viewers with men making up for 79% of the total users, a survey done by Counterpoint Research on India’s OTT video market showed. As per the India OTT Video Content Market Survey, Hotstar leads the Indian OTT video content market, followed by Amazon Prime Video, SonyLIV, Netflix, Voot, Zee5, ALTBalaji, and ErosNow in terms of the percentage of respondents subscribed to each platform.

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

In fact, ErosNow emerged as a sleeper hit among India’s OTT audience with 9% of its users watching content on the platform for more than 21 hours a week, which Counterpoint said was the highest among all OTT platforms in India.

The survey also revealed that 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.

India is a young country and OTT video market is a very competitive space in India at present. Platforms are focusing on price innovation, content creation and acquisition, and partnerships as the engine for growth…however, OTT platforms have struggled to register profits, creating an environment ripe for acquisitions or exits, ” said Hanish Bhatia, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research.

He added that new players will continue to enter the market as it is expected to record double-digit growth from subscription revenues during the next five years. 

Hotstar Still Top Of India OTT Market

The survey found that more than half of Hotstar’s user base come from metro cities and the Disney-owned platform also has the highest penetration among non-paying users.

Netflix and Amazon Prime Video were found to be highly popular in metros with the top five  metros accounting for more than 65% of users for these platforms. This was the highest as compared to all other major platforms.

The survey also revealed that these two platforms also have the highest penetration of salaried employees.

But when it came to taking the cake in Tier 1 cities, SonyLIV scored the highest marks with more than 40% of its users coming from these cities.

Voot, the streaming platform owned by Viacom18, had the highest penetration among female users and also among young users aged between 16 and 24.

ALTBalaji scored the highest among 25-35 age group users, which account for 59% of its users with more than one-third of its users coming from Kolkata alone.

ErosNow meanwhile has the largest share (59%) of its users in the 25-39 age bracket in Tier 2 and 3 cities, highest among all major OTT platforms.

India OTT Market Demographics

• Salaried employees are the largest consumer group for OTT platforms, followed by students, business owners, housewives, and others.
• More than one-third of the respondents indicated that they’re inclined to use free services only, while another one-third indicated that they’re paying for the subscription.
• Smartphones are the most popular device for OTT video content consumption. Xiaomi is the most popular smartphone brand among OTT users.
• Jio is the most popular network among OTT users in India, followed by Airtel and Vodafone-Idea.
• The most preferred language for video content is Hindi and English. Among regional languages, Telugu was found to be the most popular language, followed by Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and others.
• ‘Action’ and ‘Comedy’ are the most preferred genres for Indian viewers. The preference for Action was highest among male users, while the women respondents gravitated towards Drama and Romantic genre.