Building OTT brands through personalized conversational messaging were the topic of a recent e4m Webinar, which was powered by Gupshup. A distinguished group of industry leaders participated in the discussion.
On the panel were Girish Dwibhashyam, Vice President of Strategy at Docubay, Kinnari Dave, Deputy Vice President of Product and Innovation at ShemarooMe, Lokesh Chauhan, Chief Technology Officer at ErosNow, Omkar Shende, Senior Vice President and Head of Product at SonyLiv, Sathyajith Divakaran Nair, Senior General Manager at ManoramaMax, Suryadeep Basiya, Chief Executive Officer at O Madison’s General Manager, Vineet Shah, presided over the meeting.
Shah kicked off the conversation by mentioning BigFlix from the Reliance Group’s debut of OTT in India in 2008. He talked about how the launch of players like Hotstar, SonyLiv, and others in 2013 saw the industry advance significantly. Since there are more than 45 OTT platforms in India and their unique users account for more than half of the country’s internet population, Shah claims that “now, this ground-breaking technology has become a mainstream media vehicle.” Shah also pointed out that the entire ecosystem was expanding thanks to GEC content, in addition to the major market players and regional platforms with vernacular content.
The need to stay at home led to more consumers choosing to watch more content across a wide selection of OTT platforms, and we went from a subscriber base of 0.8 million to 18.7 million, according to SonyLiv’s Shende, who discussed how OTT consumption habits had changed as a result of the pandemic. Thus, the decision and willingness of customers to pay for more unique and original material have contributed to this enormous rise.
While acknowledging that sports are a significant factor, Shende said that the growth in the subscription model was mostly driven by SonyLiv’s unique content. OTT brands all over the world are leveraging their platforms to meaningfully engage with their subscribers directly as content and communications become more localized and consumer focused. The panelists concurred that to reach as many people as possible, it is necessary to offer a variety of original, high-quality material at various pricing points and for various demographics. Although Roy noted that he represented OTT content more from the standpoint of the consumer, he stressed that this, like any other business, would develop.
Roy was speaking about how conversational AI for platforms will be able to communicate with consumers in a country with as many languages as India. In the OTT area and how we interact with a variety of consumers, there has been a noticeable change, and things will only get better,” Roy said.
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