India’s OTT entertainment industry is cannibalising on the established bastion of traditional television, radio and cinema forms of media and entertainment. The size of the OTT market in the financial year 2020 was around $1.7 billion (both video and audio), and in the next 9-10 years, this industry has the potential to grow to become a $15 billion opportunity, according to homegrown independent transaction advisory firm RBSA Advisors.

Currently, apart from top favourites like Disney+ Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, space is seeing many local and regional OTT players, such as SonyLIV, Voot, Zee5, Eros Now, AL Balaji, Hoichoi and Adda Times, to name just a few. “Covid-19 has changed the way audience consume media. The growing market and consumer appetite for content of choice available on OTT platforms fuelled this spurt,” RBSA Advisors MD and CEO Rajeev Shah said. “Covid has accelerated the shift in consumers’ behaviour, pulling forward OTT disruption, which would, otherwise, have taken minimum half a decade,” he added.

India has the second-highest per capita consumption of online videos in the world. The average monthly data usage per user in the country increased 20 per cent (year-onyear) to 13.5GB in December last year, as Indians spent about five hours daily on a smartphone.