The Silicon Review ^Asia

According to a report by BCG, India is expected to see a rise in the OTT (over-the-top) marketby 2023.  Owing to the increased data penetration across rural markets as well as in demographic segments that include women and older generations, the OTT content or the Internet-based video content will reach $5 billion from the previous $0.5 billion in the year 2018.

Kanchan Samtani, Partner and Director of The Boston Consulting Group, says that though most of the Indian population do own at least one TV per household, the introduction of affordable data has set the pace to tap into an alternate medium where an individual can choose content based on their preferences. She also mentioned that the advertising paid content paradigm is what drives the current market operations, and consumers are unfavourably disposed to pay for the convenient content access that can be unlocked by OTT. The consumer survey done by BCG is named “Entertainment Goes Online” and was targeted at finding out what motivated consumers to adopt OTT content over the other modes of content delivery.

The survey also brought results that indicated OTT models like AVOD, TVOD and SVOD still have a chance to set their foothold in the market. It is estimated that the Indian Internet users will reach to a number of 650 million by 2023, and almost a half of them will comprise of the rural population. The study also states that the rural market has the potential to offer a significant opportunity for the OTT players.