Mumbai: The OTT business in India is buzzing with new streamers, niche, and language offerings. However, early players are struggling as heavy content spending isn't matching revenues, and India-specific low pricing hasn't spurred subscriptions. Growth has plateaued as consumers return to post-COVID normalcy, preferring to binge occasionally.
Adding to the churn is the shift towards AVOD by giants like JioCinema, offering premium events like cricket for free, with Disney+Hotstar following suit. This has strained streaming bottom lines. The rise of FAST channels is also causing industry jitters. Vidnet explores the future of the streaming ecosystem. The Vidnet 2024 is being held on 19 July 2024, at Hotel Sahara Star, Mumbai.
The fireside chat saw Indiantelevision.com group founder, chairman & editor-in-chief Anil NM Wanvari in conversation with Planetcast COO - digital Venugopal Iyengar.
The fireside chat delved into the evolving landscape of distribution technology and the challenges faced by Planetcast in its 28-year journey of serving media customers. Venugopal Iyengar highlighted Planetcast's mission to streamline content creation to delivery, emphasising the integration of software programming and AI in transforming processes and improving cost efficiency.
"We have been in the business of distribution technology, serving media customers for 28 years," said Iyengar. "Our goal is to pave the path from content creation to the endpoint where viewers watch it on their screens."
Iyengar introduced NexC, a unified platform that simplifies the distribution journey by offering a single access point for all necessary products and services. "NexC gives you a single point ingest and seamless access to all the products and services you need in your distribution journey," he explained.
Addressing challenges, Iyengar noted misconceptions about NexC being a monolithic product and concerns over transitioning to cloud solutions. "It's not a monolith. You can enter through any one product and still be part of the platform," he clarified. To ease cloud adoption, Planetcast offers hybrid solutions, combining on-prem and cloud services.
Iyengar also discussed differences between Indian and global markets in cloud adoption and highlighted the significant impact of AI. "AI has been fabulous for us," he said. "Applications like speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and scene-by-scene tagging are now seamless."
In conclusion, Iyengar emphasized the importance of embracing technological advancements to meet customer needs effectively. "We must acknowledge the benefits AI brings and continue to innovate in our approach to content distribution," he stated.
