Netflix, Zee5 scale up original content to drive growth in paid subscriptions

Video streaming services in India will continue to be among the fastest-growing platforms, backed by original content offered to users, PwC said in a report.

The subscription video-on-demand market is pegged to grow from $1.2 billion in 2020 to $2.7 billion by 2025, PwC said in the report released on Monday.

About 1,200 hours of original content was created for these over-the-top (OTT) platforms across films and episodic content last year, which led to increased subscriptions. Original content will be key in driving the growth in paid video subscriptions, which increased from 21 million in 2019 to 53 million last year and may reach 71 million in 2021.

Netflix is boosting its original content portfolio and will launch 40 original titles this year compared with about 36 last year, of which 17 were films, 11 were series and eight were documentaries and stand-up specials.

“We will be launching romantic anthology series Feels Like Ishq on July 23 and bring our Tamil anthology film Navarasa, helmed by Mani Ratnam, and Jayendra Panchapakesan on August 6. Also, global series Never Have I Ever Season 2 will be launched on July 15. We will be releasing two films including Kartik Aaryan's Dhamaka and Meenakshi Sundareshwar this year,” a Netflix spokesperson told Moneycontrol.

Zee Entertainment's digital arm ZEE5 will release over 50 theatricals and more than 40 web series this year.

“The content line-up for FY22 includes The State of Siege: Temple Attack, which marks Akshaye Khanna’s digital debut, 14 Phere with Vikrant Massey and Kriti Kharbanda and sports docu-drama Break Point featuring India’s iconic tennis pair Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi,” said Nimisha Pandey, head of Hindi originals at ZEE5.

MX Player plans to launch over 20 originals in 2021.

“In the pipeline we have Ek Thi Begum 2, Rakhtanchal 2, Aashram 2 and the launch of new shows like College Diaries and Matsya Kaand,” said Gautam Talwar, chief content officer at MX Player.

SonyLIV plans to launch 18 originals between 2021 and 2022. The platform is increasing its original content portfolio, especially after the success of Scam 1992 starring Pratik Gandhi, which led to a fivefold growth in viewership and helped add more subscribers. It’s no surprise that the platform will be launching Scam 2: by Hansal Mehta this year.

Increase in investments

To ramp up their original content portfolio, OTTs are increasing their investments.

MX Player has doubled its investments in originals from last year. Pandey of ZEE5 said that given the pace at which demand and the ecosystem are growing, investments, too, have gone up significantly.

“That also explains the content being mounted on a big scale,” she added.

According to an EY 2021 report, OTT players are expected to increase spending on original content to about Rs 19.2 billion in 2021, a 17 percent growth over 2019.

And that’s why viewers will get to see as many as 500 original titles from OTT platforms this year compared with 220 last year and 385 in 2019.

As original content is ramped up, OTT platforms are getting transformed, said Utkarsh Sinha, MD of Bexley Advisors, a boutique investment bank focused on early stage deals in tech and media.

“OTTs will essentially morph into producers and content warehouses in the long term. OTTs are growing upward from the distribution layer. Their direct-to-customer model helps them bypass this layer and allows them to move upward towards the content creation layer. The role of OTT in production can only be expected to rise as the OTT model is predicated on content richness driving repeat subscriptions,” said Sinha.