India’s streaming panorama has continued to develop at tempo, with the nation’s Over-The-High (OTT) streaming viewers reaching 547 million viewers this yr. In keeping with the Ormax OTT Viewers Report, the market penetration of streaming companies in city and rural elements of the nation climbed to 38 per cent, up from 4 per cent final yr.
This development, nonetheless, has been largely pushed by the ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) section. In distinction, the report indicated a stagnation of paid subscriptions this yr. Indian viewers are more and more annoyed with OTT streaming content material being scattered throughout quite a few platforms.
Amid a fragmented OTT ecosystem, media tech startup Streambox Media appears to be like to deal with shopper ache factors comparable to subscription and choice fatigue with its newly launched assortment of tv fashions known as Dor.
The large draw is that buyers shouldn’t have to purchase Dor TVs; as a substitute, they’d be subscribing to them. The 4K QLED TVs offered by the Micromax-backed firm are powered by an working system constructed from the bottom up known as DorOS.
The subscription-based OS “ensures an intuitive and unified viewing expertise for shoppers, eliminating fragmented navigation throughout a number of units or apps,” Streambox Media mentioned. DorOS brings collectively content material from 24+ OTT streaming apps, 300 tv channels, reside channels, information platforms, video games, and extra beneath one roof.
“Each OTT app truly does a superb job of managing their content material inside their ecosystem. Can there be a platform that sits on prime of all the things and does the identical in your house? That’s the core theme of DorOS,” Anuj Gandhi, the CEO of Streambox Media, mentioned on the launch occasion in Mumbai on Tuesday, November 26.
Chatting with indianexpress.com, Gandhi outlined comfort and search functionality as the primary worth propositions of the brand new providing.
‘Comfort platform at OS-level’
Streambox Media describes DorOS as a hyper-personalised platform that appears to assist viewers lower down on the time they spend deciding what to look at. “While you sit down earlier than the TV to eat your dinner, you’ve already completed your meal by the point you resolve what to look at,” Rahul Sharma, the co-founder of Micromax, mentioned on-stage at Tuesday’s launch. He added {that a} viewer on common spends round 18 minutes looking for content material to look at.
“The issue assertion for us was how do you navigate and discover the content material. The entire ecosystem proper now may be very fragmented. It’s important to purchase a TV from one place, a set prime field from one other, subscribe to completely different OTT apps, and so forth. So, we thought, why can’t we mix all the things into one field and make the entire thing as easy-to-use as ABC,” Sharma additional mentioned.
With DorOS, viewers will straight have the ability to land on the content material with out going into the OTT streaming app. Its single sign-on function ensures that viewers are usually not hit with login screens when making an attempt to entry the content material. Elaborating on the backend course of, Gandhi mentioned, “Each piece of content material is deep-linked. In the event you see a film on the homepage and hit Watch, the content material will begin enjoying. Whereas content material from prime apps are deep-linked, content material from different OTT apps performs from our participant itself.”
Nevertheless, he mentioned that on-boarding new OTT apps takes up plenty of time.
“Tech integration and single sign-on is doing the heavy lifting for any such product. Each piece of content material, I have to ingest as a list. Then, I’ve to construct a database round it. Then there may be single sign-on. I’ve to share the API knowledge on the backend. All that takes plenty of time. It has taken a minimum of 18-and-a-half months to get all these apps onto DorOS. In the event you have a look at the market, it’s only telcos and we who’ve finished this,” he defined.
Apart from comfort, DorOS additionally comes with highly effective search capabilities that makes content material throughout a number of apps searchable. “We’ve constructed a database of virtually 5,000 hours of content material. All the things is completed to make it extraordinarily intuitive,” Gandhi mentioned.
To arrange the DorOS homepage, the consumer has to choose sure languages from an inventory of 12. Then, they’ll decide the style of content material they wish to watch together with their most popular actors or actresses. “You’ll hold going deeper in our ecosystem to set what I’ll name your individual personalised homepage. Each app does it for his or her ecosystem, however there are usually not plenty of apps that do it at a platform-level no matter the app,” he instructed indianexpress.com.
DorOS additionally lets customers request content material suggestions from its AI chatbot known as ‘Ask Dor’. Moreover, the OS has a secure zone for youths which modifications all the ecosystem by way of a one-step course of. The Children web page doesn’t embody reside TV and information channels.
It additional exhibits customers a one-line, AI-generated description of a information programme to assist them resolve what information they wish to watch.
A few of the OTT apps that come pre-installed on Dor TVs are Prime Video, Jio Cinema, Disney Hotstar together with Zee 5, Sony Liv, Youtube, Discovery+, Solar Nxt, Aha, Hoichoi, Lionsgate Play, Manorama MAX, Journey XP, Shemaroo, Fancode, Nammaflix, Dangal Play, Dollywood Play, Hungama, Stage, VR OTT, Distro TV, Chaupal, Playflix, ETV Win, Raj TV and extra.
With the surge within the variety of OTT streaming apps in India, the federal government has raised issues about “vulgar” content material on such platforms. When requested how DorOS ensures a household pleasant viewing expertise, Anuj Gandhi mentioned, “Actually, we aren’t within the content material enterprise. They’re within the content material enterprise. No matter they convey to the desk, we’ll carry as our package deal. Tomorrow, if the federal government says to dam the content material, they won’t strategy me, they’ll strategy the OTT app. On the backend, solely they’ll have the ability to block the content material since all the things comes from their ecosystem by way of an API.”
‘India’s first subscription TV service’
Not like different TVs, Dor units don’t include a standard price ticket. As an alternative, shoppers pay an upfront “activation price” of Rs 10,799 for the 43-inch mannequin, which incorporates one month of subscription service.
After the primary month, the subscription price for the TV might be Rs 799 per 30 days until the tip of the 12-month subscription interval. Submit this, one can go for customised packages based mostly on their viewing preferences, Streambox Media mentioned.
The corporate is counting on disruptive pricing to make a splash within the TV OS section that’s presently dominated by tech giants comparable to Google (Google TV, Android TV) and Samsung (Teizen OS).
“Google and Samsung don’t do TV-as-a-service and so they don’t have a companion app. We’re bringing many firsts so I don’t see them as rivals. They’re promoting {hardware} whereas I’m promoting a service, there’s a basic distinction,” Gandhi mentioned.
Dor TVs might be out there in 43-inch, 55-inch, and 65-inch variants with 43-inch items happening sale on Flipkart and different shops from December 1 onwards. The tv comes with a four-year guarantee and is eligible for 4 DorOS software program upgrades.
The 55-inch and 65-inch subscription-based Dor TVs will solely be out there for buy early subsequent yr.
