InMobi's Glance TV rolls out lock-screen content on a million Airtel Xstream devices

Glance TV launches lock-screen content in Airtel Xtreme devices.

Glance, a part of the global consumer technology company InMobi, is rolling out lock-screen content on over a million Airtel Xstream devices.

A screen-zero platform Glance, which started offering lock-screen content on smartphones in 2019, has expanded to television sets and plans to increase its reach to four million Airtel Xstream devices.

"We are today in about a million plus devices, and it's planned to scale by June 2025 to about four million devices of Airtel," Manish Gupta, senior vice-president and general manager, Glance TV, told Moneycontrol.

When a television set is paused, lock-screen savers, in the form of around 10-15 images, show on the screen in a loop. On the other hand, people can track the score of a cricket match or a World Chess Championship game on Glance TV powered by artificial intelligence.

Driven by AI 

"On a daily basis, we publish about 150 to 200 odd such glances (lock-screen content) and each of these glances gets updated on a real-time basis. Almost 60 percent of all of these glances are actually generated via AI (artificial intelligence) and published," Gupta said.

He added that 90 percent of all the glances have some AI component. "We pick from various categories, sports, news, entertainment, fashion... Everything which is relevant for the consumer is what we put on these glances. We use a lot of generative AI to pick up the right information, summarise that right information, create glance,” Gupta said.

Glance has a bank of generated images, which are stitched with the information and published for the consumer.

From the time the information is available on the internet to the time that it comes on Glance, it can be as low as eight seconds, Gupta said.

"For example, every day we publish stock market, closing bell and opening bell updates. At 9.30 am, the stock market opens, we will publish that glance by 9.31 am."

Glance can do any language because a lot of it is generated through AI. "Today, we have content in English and as we expand, we will add new languages," Gupta said.

Smarter smart TVs 

Gupta sees a large opportunity in India due to the growing sales of smart TVs.

There were hardly seven to eight million smart TVs a couple of years back but now there are about 40 to 45 million connected TVs out of the 200 million television sets in Indian homes. “So, that's our target market. Our mission is to replace every single screensaver not just in India but any place where the screensaver is not providing value," the Glance TV head said.

Glance TV offers about 12 categories including sports, general news, world news, entertainment, fashion and Bollywood.

"Our highest category is sports. How we measure traction is that whenever there's a sports category, people pick up the remote and then people will scroll up and down to consume the sports content. We see 20 percent of our users every day using the remote and picking up and scrolling through the glances," Gupta said.

About 60 percent of all users of Glance TV are in metros or the top six metros. "But we are seeing traction from smaller locations. Jalandhar, for example, is one location where we see Glance TV coming up."

International expansion

The company is also eyeing international expansion. "The same screensavers are what you see across the world. Our objective is not just to remain in India but also do this globally. And we believe that we should be able to do that in the near future," Gupta said.

Glance has a presence in overseas markets including the US, Brazil, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. It claims to have reached around 400 million phones across the globe and is aiming for a billion devices over the next three years.

"About five-seven years back, we realised that one of the surfaces, which is the lock screen, does not have too much value to the user and that's when we created Glance. A couple of years back, we also looked at the television surface as apart from mobile phones users spend a lot of time with television sets," Gupta said.

A lot of time TV sets are on even when people are not watching and viewers only see some beautiful images.

"What we do is that we look at information that the customer effectively should be knowing, trending information, live information and that's what we publish on the screens, in a manner which is glanceable,” he said. Glanceable means that viewers should consume that information in about three or five seconds, he explained.

Monetisation not on the cards, so far

Unlike Glance, Gupta said they are yet to monetise Glance TV.

"Once we are able to establish consumer engagement, consumer love, consumer feedback, I think that's when we will start thinking about monetisation," Gupta said.

He also added that there were no plans for a separate raising for Glance TV. Glance has, so far, raised around $400 million.