Breaking Into Small Town India's TV Time

Why tier 3 & 4 cities will be the ground zero for expansion of online entertainment, Explains Abhesh Verma.

- Abhesh Verma

The Indian OTT entertainment Market is fast evolving with video consumption no longer being limited to one screen but traversing across multiple devices. Adding to this is the ubiquity of smartphones, higher internet speeds and rapidly changing content preferences among consumers.

India continues to be the fastest-growing internet market with about 730 million users expected to be created by 2020, of which 50-55% is expected to be smalltown users. The boom in the telecom sector with affordable 4g internet plans and the government’s initiatives to develop a stronger digital network are expected to create 75 percent more internet users in rural india, while an additional 75 percent will consume data in regional languages. The internet penetration in urban india is currently at 60 per cent, nearing saturation. On the other hand, internet penetration in rural indian is at 17 percent, with approximately 750 million potential untapped internet users. Although the demand for and access to digital entertainment remains centered around the metro and tier 1 cities, there has been a steady rise in consumption of online content among audiences in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. But it is the tier 3 and tier 4 towns that remain untapped with a huge market opportunity for indian ott players.