Entertainment Industry – Dutch Uncles

MX Player: Rationalising Streaming for Indian Audiences

Pratik Jain — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 10:35:04 +0000

Our 21st-century society has seen the spiraling impact of western binge-watching culture, marking OTT platforms as an inevitable daily dose of entertainment from viewing acclaimed films, to settling a charge out of flinch content, but are these paid entertainment zones suiting the financial reality and backgrounds of middle-class Indians?

When the streaming service providers were treading in a hyper-competitive relay, at that point, entered MX Player, a company having the disadvantage of rivaling with the tribe tardy but still dared to break customary norms and ran a marathon in the opposite direction, fitting in the aspirations, limitations and requirements of every average Indian.

How did MX Player fuel from a mere multimedia playback application to a leading video streaming platform on smartphones with a gigantic global install base of over 500 million?

A Chronicle of Prevalence

With its current headquarters based in Singapore, MX Player was originally founded and launched in July 2011 by a South Korean IT firm J2Interactive as a multimedia video player.

MX Player, since its release, became a Mecca concretely for android users in India and abroad as it facilitated popular features that could instantly run the otherwise not supported HD videos, SD card media transfers, and varied MP audio formats by android.

MX Player with its South Korean roots remained a cross-platform media player until Times Internet acquired the application from Zenjoy, a Chinese smartphone gaming firm, by officially investing in a majority of its undisclosed stakes in 2018.

Why Times Internet Acquired MX Player for a Whopping 1000 Crore?

When Times Internet acquired MX Player in 2018, for a hefty amount of Rs. 1000 crore, the sanction inked headlines and alongside rattled unsettling questions as to why was a focal video player valued in crores?

The answer to that lies in India’s 2016 revolutionary digital advent and internet surge, manifesting MX Player as a contemporary Avant-grand. India’s digital space was rebooted in 2016 with the launch of Jio, trending nominal data tariffs and averagely availing internet that accounted for a hyke in daily active Indian internet users by 150 million.

Times Internet mapped the incipiently paved need of Indians to binge on online content, hence, not only in 2018 did it acquire MX Player but also clinched the pre-existing brand name and loyalty of 175 MAUs (monthly active users).

It was relaunched in 2019 as a multimedia player and OTT platform with ‘MAX’ entertainment to offer. Tencent Games from China in a Series A funding round invested $111 million in MX Player marking its total valuation to $500 million.

MX Player: Reimagining and Bridging the Entertainment Cranny

MX Player after the launch of its 2.0 avatar, is topically an advertisement-led integrated playback device and OTT platform. With a thoughtfully designed user-friendly interface, MX Player caters to the local multimedia player but the major crux lies in its streaming section which is equated with explicit entertainment genres.

The video section offers 2,00,000 watch library hours for Indian content, displaying shows and movies in regional languages namely Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Telugu, and English. The application is an endless scrolling path to Live TV channel content, MX originals, music, Korean drama, dubbed international movies, award shows, national and sports news.

After close analytical consumer study, the casual gaming section of MX Player was integrated as a shrewd business strategy, a month before lockdown in February 2020, during the boom of online gaming that transformed the MX gaming zone into a gold mine while considering the user retention rates.

MX Player recorded the most noteworthy user metrics in 2020, lacking solely behind video streaming giant Youtube in terms of total hours spent per consumer.

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“Indian crowd seeks a homogenized media super app that users can visit from all economic and cultural substrata, based on time and entertainment predilection.”

MX Player’s Conversing Business Model

A true OTT venture isn’t measured by the size of its subscription revenue base, but by the strength of its user retention capabilities. MX Player umbrellas a premium AVOD (advertisement-based video on demand) model providing users subscription-free viewing to premium originals and syndicated content amid subscription-based and Hybrid OTT-business competitors Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix, SonyLiv, Zee5, YouTube, and Amazon Prime to name a few.

The advertisement and in-app purchases led revenue demographic retained consumers who purely have to bear a few advertisements partially outshined by the “free to consume” service and majorly attracted 50 news brands to advertise in a pandemic-infested year. Well aware of the ROI (return on investment), investors instill slots in sponsored shows and real-time streaming content.

The app claims to have quadrupled its income rate since 2020, thanks to a slew of new brand engagements and offerings oriented on the continuance of ad-supported streaming, which pulls millions of potential users and distinguishes them from other OTT invaders.

The gaming section of MX Player is a big-time entertainment hooker and monthly revenue generator evinced as the best platform to advertise.

The advertisement duration varying from 15 to 30 seconds is not interrupting for audiences in the casual gaming section, but in turn, shares a cordial viewing relation with users as countless demand supplementary advertisements in the gaming zone, enhancing the gaming experience with additional points and progressive benefits.

MX Player appears to be positive towards the future standpoint of its commercial mix-driven business reach and advocates that the model is churning significant foreign dollars to not just MX Player but compensating the market in general.

A Guerrilla Marketing-Mix Stringing Small Cities

MX player has outsourced audience prospects with an aggressive marketing approach aiming to emerge as a profitable super-app piling “entertainment” under one roof. With lockdown leveraging digital engagement tremendously a guerilla marketing tactic was applied to many MX originals, at times investing zero funds on the actual show campaign but to the contrary, generating attention and profit from millions organically.

It focused on restoring value proposition leapfrogging from subsisting 175 MAUs to 220 million in 2020 and nearing digitally to 280 million up to the minute.

Sharply focusing on the substantially uncatered and ignored Tier-2 and Tier-3 Indian city users via personalized push notification and A/B testing, cementing an underrated audience which constitutes a vast part of MX Player’s topical user base who binge MX library in mid-range 4G smartphones.

The onset and continuation of the global pandemic has parallelly generated lasting engagement to the application. MX Player’s typical and target users reside from top metros to small cities and now even distant towns ranging from 18-24 years and 25-34 years for whom specific regional and social scenario-related content is positioned.

MX Player as of late bagged the 7th position among the top 10 monthly user engaging applications in India.

MX Player: Pushing Boundaries On Regional Content

MX Player imbibes impeccably to Indian behaviorism and rolls a hungry appetite to binge on, an experimental blend of rural as well as urban content unlike other global video streaming applications, such as Netflix and Amazon, who have a pure international influence on their content collection.

About 30 per cent of MX Player’s content is multilingual as out of its 500 million active installation base, 350 million installers drum from India.

MX Player undoubtedly reads the very veins of Indian entertainment seekers putting in relatable content from ‘I’mMature’ to ‘Flames’ that grapples the attention of teenagers and college students to producing regional shows such as “Queen” dashing a universally emotional appeal.

With diverse offerings for every section of the Indian society from popular linguistic daily soaps to lining crime thrillers with a rural protagonist and flawed godmen character in shows as ‘Bhaukal’, ‘Aashram’ whose more than 263 million and 1.3 billion views perforate one deep into MX player’s digital market disruption extent.

The app has over the years perfectly formulated to deliver content proportional to social scenarios as ‘High’, released in 2020, surrounding Bollywood drug trials.

The content mix of MX Player was updated with 40 shows in FY2020 and nearing the first half of 2021, 11 contemporary MX originals have been officially streamed.

It stakes upwards in the user retention and addition market with 200 million users luring in from regional content streams.

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“Digital adoption advent in India is anticipating Indian OTT market to emerge globally dominant in terms of market size.”

Dwarfing Local and Global OTT Players

MX Player fits in the budget of average Indians proving to be “the situational face of affordable entertainment” with a language personalisation interface that generates regional and foreign-language shows as per user preference.

OTTs as Netflix indirectly mandate a strong Wi-Fi connection to seamlessly stream while Amazon consumes up to 1 GB of data in 1.5 hours, acting plainly exorbitant to fit in middle-class Indian pockets who save money to fulfill family aspirations, and less about bandwidth expenditure for entertainment.

MX Player empowers streaming in the lowest of resolutions from 144p to 1080p with an ultra-data-preserving feature that truncates internet consumption by 50 per cent.

MX Player sidelined OTT sharks in terms of hours spent monthly with an average user fixating 8 hours on MX Player contrasted to 4/5/7 hours on Amazon Prime, Hotstar, and Netflix respectively.

While Amazon Prime and Netflix focused on a niche 5 percent Indian audience, MX Player partnered with television broadcasters attaching shows with lethal fan bases to the content library.

The entertainment genres of MX Player omnibuses, live streaming from syndicated partners namely Voot, Shemaroo, Humagma, Sony entertainment, SunTV Network, Paramount pictures, Goldmine Telefilms, and Gaana.

It established its global footprint by publicising the OTT service exclusively in the United States, United Kingdom, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Pakistan, Bhutan, UAE, Canada, Australia, Bangladesh, and Nepal. MX Players international library includes Hollywood, Korean, Spanish, and Turkish movies dubbed in local languages while for other nations MX Player remains the topmost priority as a multimedia player.

Are OTT Platforms the Surfacing Future of Mainstream Media?

Venturing on a different path altogether MX Player has teamed with electronic manufacturers such as OnePlus, Compaq, TLC, to deliver smart TVs preloaded with the MX Player application.

MX Player is in discussion to adapt an SVOD (subscription-based video on demand) model this year, however, official timelines remain undisclosed.

In India, there are to date 607 million 4G linked smartphones and with the global pandemic boosting digital acceleration, MX Player predicts smart TVs to emerge as the future face of mainstream media.

In the next five years, India may perhaps have 800 million broadband-connected TV, laptop, and smartphone displays, and MX Player pursues to stream on a fairly large proportion of those screens.

The gaming section has manifested as MX Player’s cash-cow which would be positively evolved to attribute a high-end gaming experience and enkindle valuable profits.

Will MX PLayer re-define its very own vision of “Everytainment” if the topical predictions and business ventures blossom growth in the near future?

For more inspiring stories check out our Inspire section!

The post MX Player: Rationalising Streaming for Indian Audiences appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

BookMyShow: The Indian Ticketing Disruptor

Erica DSouza — Sat, 15 May 2021 10:35:04 +0000

“We found peace in nature”- A common topic of discussion among people sharing their profound experiences after returning from a backpacking trip in South Africa in 1999, except for one person who “found a business idea”.

Ashish Hemrajani was enjoying peace while sitting under a tree at a beautiful location, listening to the promotion of rugby tickets on a local radio channel, when a business proposition hit his head. Little did he know that it would grow to become one of the most prominent players in the entertainment industry.

The 24-year-old entrepreneur had so much faith in his idea that without a second thought he sent the ‘I quit’ message to his boss to give himself that push of pursuing his idea. Hemrajani returned home with a business model in his head to disrupt the informal ticketing industry with the Indian market as his bull’s eye. Hence, the birth of bookmyshow.com.

Genesis of Ticket-Booking Transformation

Hemrajani soon turned his bedroom into an office space and launched his first internet venture – Bigtree Entertainment Pvt Ltd, the parent company of BookMyShow – in 1999.

He roped in his friends Parikshi Dar who took the technological domain by its reins, and Rajesh Balpande who took over the finances. “The three musketeers” started the company to streamline the ticketing market. BookMyShow was initially branded as ‘Go For Ticketing’. In 2002, the company was renamed ‘India Ticketing’ before ending up with the current name in 2007.

The start-up was focused on making movie ticket booking as simple as possible before diving into selling tickets across every segment in entertainment. They had it all covered from concerts, stand-up shows, open-mic, flea markets, plays, sporting events, and workshops. Planning to visit the planetarium? BookMyShow got your tickets ready in a few clicks! That was the kind of branding the start-up undertook.

Through the website and mobile application (which was launched in 2012), users were easily able to view show timings, read reviews, watch trailers, book tickets and much more.

The company’s unique selling point rested in breaking free from the traditional process of waiting in line and the disappointment of hearing the words “Sold Out” exactly when you were an inch away from the ticket counter. BookMyShow made it possible to reserve a place at an event or a movie for yourself from the comfort of your couch. We will unfold how the company’s offering and motto expanded beyond just booking tickets with ease.

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The start-up was focused on making movie ticket booking as simple as possible before diving into selling tickets across every segment in entertainment.

A Bumper Hit after a “Flop Show”

Every ticket comes at a price! When the trio launched the start-up, selling tickets online was a little too foreign to India. The reasons ranged from low internet penetration and digital transaction/banking services or general lack of awareness of digital mediums for everyday services.

On the other hand, lack of e-ticketing softwares in multiplexes was also a significant concern and added to the start-up’s woes. At one point, they did business by sending people out on bikes to deliver the tickets to customers.

Under such challenges, the business model of the start-up was losing its long term stability and had to be called off. The company had also invested in call centres across 12 cities with around 150 employees.

This was coupled with the bloodbath of Dot-com crash in the US in 2000 which had reached the Indian shores around 2002. As the internet became a bad word, investors began backing out. BooMyShow had to close down offices, except Mumbai and Delhi, with its employee strength coming to mere 6 from 150.

Imagine if the founders had decided to shut down and take up regular jobs. They rather braved the storm and decided to stick along and continue the business. As soon as the waves came down, the founders decided to pick up the pieces and started to invest in building the infrastructure around entertainment first.

The number of multiplexes between 2002 and 2004 were also gradually developing across the country. The founders decided to cloak themselves as “programming arrangement suppliers” that provided computerised tagging programming (e-ticketing software) to multiplexes.

They soon learned that freebies, no matter how good, are not sustainable. So, they began charging for the same. Besides installing these software, the start-up also ran customer care service for the multiplexes amongst others similar offerings.

The Dot-Com crash brought in some positive transformation in the Indian market as well with better internet and visa card facilities.

It took almost five years for the start-up to reap the benefit of this strategy of building up the infrastructure while waiting for the demand to pick up to eventually build a consumer brand on top of that.

Hemrajani learned from the past mistakes and kept pushing forward. Eventually, in 2007, Network 18 made a hefty investment. This was followed by another 5 rounds till 2019 and the start-up managed to raise over $224.5 million.

The Diversification

BookMyShow gradually generated profits and was worth Rs 24.1 crores in 2007. By 2010, the company was the market leader in the online ticketing category. As more and more e-tickets were processed, the profitability kept improving. In July 2012, the company sold a record of 1 lakh tickets in a day and over 2 million tickets in a month.

It was the right time to scale up as the investors lined up. BookMyShow knew that its USP could bring more people to the cinemas and multiplexes, thus, it initiated tie-ups.

In 2013, the company signed a five-year partnership deal with PVR Cinemas, adding 250 new screens to their list.

At the time, 20% of PVR’s ticket sales were generated through its own website. With the tie-up, the multiplex aimed to capture the audience that was not present on the PVR digital platform. Hence the partnership was a perfect marriage. BookMyShow’s analytical ability to target the right content to the right users and marketing initiatives around alternative content was a key point to this partnership.

The company had expanded in over 200 cities by 2014. As investors -SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and Network 18- stepped in, the company upped its targets to expand its reach and continued to develop the infrastructure around. It successfully expanded to global markets like Malaysia and New Zealand and aggressively forged new partnerships, especially in sports like Formula 1, Indian Premier League, Aircel Chennai Open, Super Fight League and Yonex Badminton Championships.

The company did not resort to traditional advertising. They reached out to the masses through digital mediums itself. They knew that’s where their audience lived and breathed.

One-Stop Shop Gateway to Entertainment

During 2016-17, the company went on an acquisition spree. The list included – Local food and restaurant recommendation engine Burrp, HD video-on-demand platform Nfusion, online movie ticketing platform MastiTickets, DIY platform Townscript, social media analytics start-up Eventifier, fan relationship management (FRM) solutions provider Fantain Sports and so on. There was a pattern. BookMyShow has started to move way beyond a hassle-free ticketing platform.

It has expanded its vision to become- one-stop destination for entertainment!

Over the years, BookMyShow has gained the advantage of having a deep insightful understanding of users or the target base of any event organiser. Hence, it was in the best possible position to expand its offering to hosting and managing events to bolster its revenue streams.

Its services started right from designing a microsite and a mobile app for an event to event marketing that includes promotions, social media marketing, database marketing to name a few. In short, they created an end-to-end ticketing solution which allowed event organisers to choose from a host of services – right from online services and exposure, on-ground services to consulting services.

Some of the biggest examples are the annual Supersonic Music Event, the Justin Briber concert, The Global Citizen India Festival, IPL, Sunburn etc.

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Over the years, BookMyShow has gained the advantage of having a deep insightful understanding of users or the target base of any event organiser.

Exclusivity Factor

While booking tickets to events on BookMyShow, there are numerous things one might notice. Right from the banners advertising the upcoming blockbusters to a cafe around the corner hosting an open mic event. BookMyShow provides a wide range of choices to customers.

From a business perspective, organisers receive numerous solutions like generating user interest and hype for the events through BookMyShow. This is in addition to the software solutions that the company provides to cinemas. BookMyShow has exclusive access to Vista ERP APIs used by cinemas and multiplexes. These APIs are integrated with the backend of its app to display the real-time availability of movie tickets.

The company makes money through ticketing revenue and non-ticketing revenue. Ticketing revenue includes internet handling fees and commissions on ticket booking. The company charges a convenience fee on the price of the tickets and retains the difference.

If it is a non-movie event, BookMyShow gets a commission from selling tickets to such events. Non-ticketing revenue refers to money made by promotion of a company’s artwork (not restricted to films and short films) for “interest creation”. The company collaborates with BookMyShow and takes advantage of the massive page views to promote new artists and their offerings.

Consumers like anything which is easy-to-use, not too technical and yet appealing. BookMyShow, since the beginning, has maintained a simple user interface, making it easy to navigate. The events are properly categorised with filter options. Their alliance with various payment gateways is a win-win proposition as users are able to avail discounts, offers and reward points. It also cashes on the advantage of selling tickets in various languages, attracting a wider audience.

Survival of the ‘Tickets’: Going OTT Way

When the Dot-Com came crashing down in 2002, BookMyShow stood its ground. When investors pulled out and Hemrajani had to switch to offering software solutions, the business did not close down. The company has refused to bow down time and again against every blow that has come their way.

Now they are facing yet another punch – Covid-19 pandemic. The entertainment industry has been hit hard, with many forced or mulling over to bring the shutters down as the lockdown diaries continue.

The financial reports of the company weigh heavy on them. In 2020, BookMyShow reportedly laid off or furloughed 270 employees in view of the pandemic. Even to date, the company has been renegotiating with vendors, partners and landlords and implementing as many cost-saving measures.

Tough times call for ‘creative’ measures. It noticed a shift in user’s consumption habits for entertainment during the lockdown and implemented agile strategies to keep up. They introduced virtual in-home entertainment offerings in India and other global markets. BookMyShow recently started a pay-per-view model. Users will be able to pay for content from the BookMyShowlibrary, offering over 600 movie titles. The service is called BookMyShow Stream.

The platform will now compete with many other players like Apple TV and Google Play for streaming theatrical releases in India, in addition to OTT players like Netflix, Disney Hotstar and Amazon Prime Video.

In April 2020, the company engaged almost four million people with streaming events online and a lot were free. The platform had opened pre-booking for Zack Snyder’s Justice League from March 6 and sold over 31,000 streams in pre-bookings. Within three days of launch it made history in India on the channel. The numbers show crossed over 100,000 streams in just three days.

BookMyShow Stream became the fastest Transactional-Video-On-Demand (TVOD) platform in India to cross 100,000 streams sold within just one and a half month since its launch.

BookMyShow is agile in its approach and response to customer needs and this is one of the greatest reasons why it has made it as a successful player in the industry so far even after numerous knockdowns.

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Creator Economy: A New Breed of Entertainment

Shalmoli Sarkar — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 02:35:02 +0000

It was during the year 2000 when our television sets were largely dominated by Saas-Bahu soaps that kept Indian audiences glued to it. The shows were aired at 8 pm that ran for several years and completed episodes nearing 2000. In those times, a teenager who had just stopped watching Cartoon Network had no other choice but was left to watch the daily soaps with family. The age group of 15-25 years remained largely untapped since the entertainment content catering to them was largely absent. The advent of inexpensive internet plans, affordable smartphones, short-form video apps like TikTok and Dailyhunt’s Josh, and the addition of video features on social media platforms like reel, FB live, YouTube live on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube respectively have changed the course of entertainment that has given birth to independent content creators, even from the rural parts of India as well. The emergence of such platforms has given the millennials and Gen Z to be vocal about experiences, knowledge, and opinion. Right from entertainment, education, DIY tips, gaming to news, the creator economy has personalized content that caters to the audience of various interests and motivations.

This boom in the creator economy has now emerged to be a career option for many Gen Z and millennials since many big brands are collaborating with the creators.

The future of the creator economy seems to be bright in India since it is expected that the number of internet users will touch a user base of 974 million by 2025. An average Indian spends around 17 hours on such platforms each week, which confirms its popularity.

The popularity in the creator economy can be attributed to the below reasons:

Easy creation of visual content using a smartphone
The duration of videos being short: an average of 15 seconds to 3 min which is easier to consume.
Hyper-customized content delivery
Multiple modes of creative expression
The minimalist vertical video feed, since 94% of the viewers hold their phone upright to which vertical videos occupy the entire screen grabbing viewer’s undivided attention

The content from the creator’s economy is based on the following facets:

DIY or tutorial content

This content genre has witnessed immense popularity in the pandemic as out-of-home consumption reached an all-time low. Creators turned to create content that could help people do tasks on their own. For instance, cutting your hair yourself, create masks from your T-shirt, work from home makeup hacks, fashion hacks, etc.

Entertainment

Indian population majorly comprises Gen Z that likes to consume and create short videos. Other than YouTube, short-form video apps like TikTok for their easy-to-use features and localized content were largely successful in developing content creators from tier-II, III, IV, and V cities. Though, the app was banned but, the creator economy being a lucrative one, led Dailyhunt’s Josh a short-form video app, an alternative to TikTok to raise a funding of $100 billion through a series H round from Qatar Investment Authority. Local language support is one of the key highlights of Josh, it currently supports 12 Indian languages. Josh currently has 77 million users per month and has over 1.5 billion video plays per day.

Collaboration with brands

Brands that are big or small are now collaborating with content creators on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook because of their fan following and authentic content creation.

Creating community

Human beings have an affinity to be in groups where there is a sense of belonging. From lifestyle to social commerce, and from health and fitness to mental wellness, users on most of these homegrown platforms are engaging and interacting with content that caters to their specific interests.

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