MUMBAI: The bets on the Indian OTT market have seen an exponential rise over the last few years. However, only a handful of companies have been able to make a mark. One of them is Times internet’s daring bet MX Player. In the coming year, MX Player is looking at strengthening its vernacular focus as well as gaming.
When the company shifted its focus this year, there was a doubt about its transition from utility to service. However, MX Player CEO Karan Bedi says that the platform has exceeded all the targets and the target for March 2020 has already been achieved in September 2019. Bedi says that original content has performed well. The platform is still learning about things like which content works, what the user likes, how they react to a product, how to improve, etc.
The year 2020 will see another 35-30 new original shows with 15-16 in the first half of the year in different genres. Out of these, three to four are big regional shows.
“There is a whole slate of exciting shows coming up. We obviously continue to work with our partners who bring exciting content in the regional and Hindi side. We have already originals in Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Marathi, and we will continue to do more in Bhojpuri, Kannada, Malayalam, and in Bengali. You will see originals across languages. In the coming year, probably 40-50 per cent of content will be regional. It’s exciting. And gaming is a big focus in 2020,” he says.
MX Player hosts other platforms’ content as well including Arre, ShemarooMe, Pocket Aces, Ms. Malini, QYOU Media, EPIC channel, etc. It says that this strategy of partnership doesn’t hamper its own image building. Instead, it wants to be the destination that people come to for any content they like.
“I think we are happy to be in a situation where there is content that we produce and content that our partners produce. There is no reason why I should deny my audience what they want to watch. And all the relationships we have are win-win. It grows the market. So I think that we are not in any way worried about that,” he comments.
He also mentioned that they have had over 100 brands for MX Player from Airtel to Godrej, Amazon to Flipkart, even FMCG companies like Dabur. There are a total of 150 clients now. He added that many of them are repeat clients who continue to spend on the platform on a regular basis as they are seeing ROI. According to him, there is a good split of brands coming on OTT platforms. While FMCG is huge in traditional media, the ratio is not equal on OTT as the audiences are totally different. Though e-commerce and BFSI brands are early adopters, FMCG is also catching up.
“I think everybody is in investment mode. I have to say that it takes time to build large consumer businesses. Even if you look at the TV industry in India for the first 10-12 years in-fact I don’t think profits came. I don’t think we will take that long. I think OTT will take much less because overall the ecosystem has evolved now. The ad and payment ecosystems are much more evolved compared to when TV started in India. Certainly, there was a long period of investment before the business became sizeable. I don’t think profitability or break-even is that far away,” he concludes.
