Video streaming goes from gold rush to yard sale

India’s 30-plus streaming services have poured money into content only to struggle with both subscriptions and ads. One by one, they’re turning to aggregators like Jio TV, Airtel TV and MX Player

Many smaller platforms are licensing their original content to telecom companies and other streaming services

With companies struggling with subscription and advertising business models, licensing seems to be the way out

While such partnerships do give their content wider reach, video streaming platforms lose exclusivity

Increasingly, the streaming market has started to look more like the cable television industry it was meant to disrupt

Video streaming platforms are not chasing subscribers anymore.

For a good three years now, video streaming has witnessed a gold rush. Every production, broadcasting and content distribution company in town has either launched or is on its way to launch its own video streaming platform. With one goal—to replicate the subscription success of American streaming giant Netflix.

In these three years, content broke character in India, cutting out the middlemen—cable and satellite TV providers—and going straight to the consumer. But now, faced with the reality of an oversupplied market, streaming services are increasingly turning to a new set of middlemen: aggregators.

AUTHOR

Harveen Ahluwalia

In her last assignment, Harveen was at Mint, the business daily published by HT Media. At Mint, where she spent about two years, she wrote stories on retail, food and the media business. Harveen is a B.Com (H) graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi. She has a diploma in journalism from the Times School of Journalism. Like many folks at The Ken, Harveen talks and tweets a lot. When she isn’t writing or reading, she likes to sketch and doodle. She can be reached at harveen at the-ken dot com.

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