Hostar accounts for 40% of long form content viewed in India
Uday Shankar, president of The Walt Disney Company APAC, and chairman of Star and Disney India, introduced Hotstar to Disney's investors at the Investor Day conference held in Burbank recently. This was the first investor day conference oragnised after Disney's acquisition of Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox, and Hotstar was the focus of Shankar's presentation, which also spoke about Star India's scale in the country.
Shankar revealed that the video streaming platform, which launched four years back, almost coinciding with the 2015 ICC World Cup held in Australia and New Zealand, has reached peak engagement of 300 million monthly active users.
Shankar went on to expand briefly on how Hotstar managed to achieve the feat. "First and foremost, we were ahead of the curve. When everybody was dismissing India as a data dark market, we anticipated the impending shifts (in data cost, smartphone penetration, and online video consumption) and built Hotstar. We also kept mobile, and in particular Android (platform) at the center of our strategy, and created an app that was high quality, and feature rich, but which was also extremely light and nimble," he explained.
He added that the programming on Hotstar also helped since all the linear TV programming was available on the video streaming app almost simultaneously, and Star India ensured that the app was built for scale given India's population. The focus on scalability included driven advertising on the platform. "Today Hotstar accounts for 40 per cent of all longform digital content consumed in India," Shankar revealed. Hotstar currently houses more than 100, 000 hours of drama, movie, sports, and news content.
Sports, especially cricket has driven a lot of the engagement enjoyed by Hotstar. Star on its part, has tried to make the IPL viewing experience on TV and digital more immersive to as many Indians as possible. This means the network has invested in localising content through languages, and driving engagement through unique features on the app, said Shankar. "The success of our strategy is evident in the improved performance of the IPL last season," he said. According to Shankar's presentation, the tournament saw a 50 per cent increase in revenues (TV and digital), and a 30 per cent increase in viewership in 2018 (over the 2017 edition).
Shankar also spoke about the network's performance in television adding that the Star Network captures 30 per cent share of all TV advertising in the Indian market. It's share of digital advertising in the country is also pegged around 30 per cent, while it claims to command a share of 40 per cent of all TV affiliate revenues in the country. TV affiliate revenue refers to Star's share of distribution revenues.
