Tata Play, a leading direct-to-home (DTH) company in India, plans to expand its OTT aggregator platform, Binge, beyond its DTH subscriber base. The platform currently offers subscriptions to 27 OTT apps and reaches out to non-Tata Play customers who may not have an existing relationship with the company in another form.
The company is in the process of integrating Apple TV+ for its customers over the next few weeks and is in conversation with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to make their apps accessible to mobile users, too, through a single subscription plan.
The Binge platform boasts national, regional, and international apps across 13 languages. Other than OTT content, the company is experimenting with gaming, having partnered with Gamezop to provide its users access to 100 games on the platform. Up to four viewers can simultaneously access the platform’s library using a single subscription.
In India, over-the-top video platforms are bundled with telecom operators’ services, but emerging aggregator platforms like Binge, Prime Video Channels, and Airtel XStream Premium have extended the reach of smaller firms struggling to stay afloat in India’s cluttered online video market.
The CEO of Tata Play, Harit Nagpal, emphasized that the general market continues to see traction for catch-up television programming besides web originals. As is common, DTH bases have been seeing spikes during events of consumer interest, be it elections or cricket tournaments.
In April this year, Tata Play got approval from the markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to raise funds through an initial public offering (IPO). It has more than 18 months to file for an IPO from the date of Sebi’s approval.
