India's OTT market is the fastest growing, has potential to become largest in the world: Gaurav Gandhi

The OTT market in India is the fastest growing and has the potential to become the largest in the world, said Gaurav Gandhi, Country Head, Amazon Prime Video, India, addressing the session titled ‘The Big Pitch: Is the Industry ready, What’s Next?’ at the 10^th edition of the CII Big Picture Summit 2021.

Gandhi also gave reasons for his strong belief in the Indian OTT market’s future.

“India is the fastest growing OTT market in the world and has the potential to be the largest as it builds scale, having established a strong foundation,” he said. Further explaining the reasons, he added, “One, OTT segment in India has a huge base of consumers with an insatiable appetite for entertainment and disposable income to pursue the best experiences; two, a very rich pool of creators who have the power to create world-class entertainment experiences and third the deep penetration of connectivity via affordable broadband available ubiquitously across multiple devices.”

The CII Big Picture Summit 2021, held virtually, brought together key stakeholders from the media and entertainment industry who discussed and deliberated on the years gone by and the upcoming opportunities and trends to foresee.

Gandhi said that Prime Video is contributing to the growth of the OTT market by “addressing some of the most significant challenges that currently exist in fuelling the growth of the media and entertainment industry. To begin with, we broke the barrier of geographies, addressing the challenge of reach or distribution. For example, today, Prime Video serves 99% of pin codes in the nation and reaches 240 countries and territories around the world.”

He added that Prime Video has broken the limitation of viewership imposed by language by using subtitles and dubbing. As a result of this, he claimed, “50% of the viewing of different language movies in India comes from outside the home state. All of this has been made possible by enabling creators to get their stories to reach the customers through the power of video streaming.”

He thanked Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Anurag Thakur, for recognising the role of the OTT industry as a ‘force of good’ in creating jobs across the media and entertainment ecosystem and fuelling its growth.

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