MUMBAI: Content is the king, but technology is the supreme general.

Voot has won the coveted International Broadcasting Convention 2017 (IBC2017) Innovation Award for Content Distribution for its Progressive Web App (PWA) product - Voot Lite, in Amsterdam on 17 September.

Viacom18’s ad-supported VoD service, Voot, was the only online video service that was shortlisted for the awards amongst 190 plus global entries.

Voot COO Gaurav Gandhi said, “In the video streaming business, both content and technology play an equally important role. While Viacom18 is well-known for pioneering efforts and leadership in the content business, it is indeed great to have our company featured on the global technology leaderboard as well. In this business particularly, partnerships and alliances are key to achieving big milestones and we would like to thank the team at Google for providing us support in our PWA.”

IBC has recognised Voot’s initiative in giving mobile web users an app like experience in consuming digital video. Voot was an early adopter of this technology which led to a huge jump in users and video watch time on its mobile web.

Voot is the first video platform to have launched a PWA product and that includes offline page caching functionality, fast loading, responsive interface and push notifications. The ‘Add to Home Screen’ feature of PWA allows the user to launch the page from their home screen like a native app and a service worker decreases load times.

Launched in 2016, Voot at present hosts over 40,000 hours of content on its streaming service and has over 25 million monthly active users.