The word ‘content’ is something that everyone and anyone who works in the media and entertainment sector breathes, drinks and eats! If you ask why, simply type the words “Meaning of Content” on Google and you will see it will lead to the meaning ‘in a state of peaceful happiness’ or ‘to satisfy someone’. This is precisely what the newest (and one of its kind services for India) – HOOQ – is setting out to accomplish.
The latest entrant in the space of content aggregation, through an SVOD (subscription video on demand) model is HOOQ, which was launched in January this year as a joint venture between the world’s second largest telecom operators Singtel, Sony Pictures, and Warner Brothers Entertainment. Last week, the company launched its beta program in India, and plans to roll out the service to consumers sometime in mid-June.
Unlike most other services of this type in the country, HOOQ will not have any ad supported content, so you’re either a subscriber, who can watch all the content on the service by paying Rs 199 for a month, or you watch nothing at all.
HOOQ has developed an app for both iOS as well as Android platforms that need to be downloaded for accessing the contents.
Let’s look more closely as to what might make this new service click with the Indian Diaspora.
Content is king
The service brings to India some of the biggest Hollywood catalogues where customers can look forward to accessing more than 5,000 Hollywood movies and television shows. This includes titles from Sony, Warner Bros., Disney India, Dreamworks and Miramax such as Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Iron Man, among others and TV series such as Nikita, The Shield and Friends.
In addition to top Hollywood favourites, HOOQ offers customers an extensive range of over 10,000 Indian films and TV favourites. To deliver this, HOOQ has partnered with the country’s top studios, including YRF (Yash Raj Films), Disney India, Rajshri Movies, Reliance, Shemaroo, Sri Balaji, AP International, Whacked Out Media and more than 50 other studios. Customers can watch local high-grossing films such as Chennai Express, Vishwaroopam, Singham as well as classic films, including Ek Duje Ke Liya and Andaz Apna Apna.
The 15,000 titles that the company is launching with right now will include a mix of local and International content, including Hollywood films and US TV shows, along with Thai, Korean, and Japanese films. HOOQ has already been launched in the Philippines and Thailand and co-founder and chief content and distribution officer Krishnan Rajagopalan is very confident of adding nearly 200 titles on a daily basis for the next 2-3 months; where the content is being curated using a combination of algorithms and human intervention.
Although HOOQ’s investors include Sony Pictures and Warner Brothers Entertainment, its library boasts of a lot of other studios as well, and its presence in the market won’t affect other streaming services’ relationship with those two studios either.
Interestingly according to Rajagopalan, the service does not plan to modify content for Indian broadcast standards, unless there is a legal requirement to do so. He believes that the laws aren’t ‘clear’ on this matter, and while they will comply with all laws, right now the company doesn’t believe in altering existing content. Given the often fanatical levels of censorship on TV in the country, this could well be one good reason to subscribe to the service, though once the service becomes more popular it might just come under the scrutiny of ‘important people’ who take the final call on what should India watch.
A binger’s delight
The Indian audience of today is sick and tired of being told what, when and where to watch their content and this is the perfect catalyst for players like HOOQ to capitalise on the opportunity of being the destination for this agitated and intelligent audience.
If one goes by the clever marketing campaign that Star India rolled out earlier this year to promote its newest offering – Hotstar, which is an over the top (OTT) platform consisting of a host of old and current best of Star’s catalogue – where the clear message was to ‘go solo’ and not follow the herd.
The mature Indian audience of today doesn’t believe in appointment viewing anymore and wants to watch their favourite TV shows, movies or other such content at the time, place and device that they choose to view it on.
There is always a lot of catch up or binge watching that viewers tend to indulge in, given the hectic work or educational hazards in everyone’s lives. Services like HOOQ are god sent angles for this audience. With an already loaded library, which is constantly being updated every day, users will have the luxury of catching up or experience premium content at reasonable prices on a monthly subscription basis.
The dreaded ‘P’ word
If you are in the business of content this is one word that can send shivers down anyone’s spine – Piracy. In a market like India, that’s a serious consideration, but HOOQ insists that the Rs 199 charge for the service offers enough value to its user.
Even the average Joe of today has the knowledge and capabilities of downloading premium content like has been the case with HBO’s original series Game of Thrones and even Oscar nominated movies making their way to people’s desktops and laptops even before they make it to the big screens in the country.
With piracy, users still have complete control over their content. And the experience of using an application like Popcorn Time, which HOOQ offers, surpasses most legal solutions.
The HOOQ app already boasts of nearly 40,000 downloads and enjoys a 3.6 rating from 444 users (at the time of writing this report) on the Google Play Store. Although, how many of the ones who have downloaded the app will also subscribe to the service can’t be predicted yet as we are still in the honeymoon period of the service in the country.
Connectivity woes
Despite fairly unreliable 3G service and ISPs that offer low speeds and data caps, video consumption in India has been showing a positive growth curve. YouTube alone has over 70 million monthly users, and while the likes of Netflix and Hulu may not be available here just yet, the more serious viewer can choose from several free and paid options across services. The company is targeting emerging markets with this SVOD service and is confident that the UI has been designed to be easily used on a number of devices and not just premium model handsets. So that’s why, instead of the small thumbs of the same size one will see on other platforms, the service has got these big, poster-like thumbs throughout the UI, that are easy to see and interact with.
There’s also a bandwidth indicator that shows on the top left corner of your stream. So if your video is getting pixelated, you can see that and you’ll know why, but if you’d rather let it buffer instead, you have that option too. On the bottom right, you can click on the settings, where they’re available, you can choose the subtitle language, or the audio track, or change the video quality from low, medium, or high as well.
At the same time, HOOQ also allows you to download movies or TV shows to watch later – as the idea is that if you’re at home or at work, with a good Wi-Fi connection, then you can download a film to watch while you’re making your commute – without eating into your mobile Internet plan.
User can either download at low quality to preserve data, or if they’re nearing the end of the cycle and there’s a lot of data left on their plan, they might prefer to switch to high quality. One has the privilege of even setting the app to only stream on Wi-Fi, or set it to offline mode, where it doesn’t use data at all, and only plays downloaded videos.
Singtel had mentioned previously that HOOQ would use Singtel Group’s carrier billing capabilities. In India, the carrier billing facility will be provided by Airtel, in which Singtel owns a 32.34% stake. The service can be paid for through credit cards, debit cards, net banking and Paytm wallets.
Last month, Quickplay announced that its managed video platform will power Singtel’s HOOQ. The solution will initially include its library of multi-language content featuring over 10,000 movies and TV series and DRM solution by Microsoft PlayReady and Verimatrix.
The HOOQ service is being run on powerful servers provided by one of the most reputed network solution providers in the country – Akamai, a leading cloud computing services and content delivery network (CDN) provider for media and software delivery.
Healthy competition
Being a newbie in the marketplace HOOQ will certainly be pitted or compared to the already existing players in the business. The biggest and most fierce competitor that this service will be facing will be from Star India’s recently launched video streaming service Hotstar, which currently includes all of Star India’s television and sports offerings along with offering Bollywood & regional movies from other partner studios. The added advantage that Hotstar enjoys is of being a free service as against HOOQ’s model.
Google too had rolled out its movie streaming service YouTube Rentals in India, back in March 2013, but hasn’t seen much traction. YouTube Rentals offers users a wide range of Bollywood, regional, off-beat & international movies, which they can rent or purchase for online viewing.
Last month, digital entertainment company Hungama.com had revealed plans of launching a new application called Hungama Play for streaming movies, which would feature about 3,000 Indian and English movies.
Other video & movie streaming services available in India include Singapore-based Spuul, Times Internet’s BoxTV, Zee Entertainment Enterprises’ DittoTV, and Reliance Group’s BigFlix, among other smaller players.
Advice on being omnipresent
This is probably a first product in its category. We don’t think there is anybody doing what the team at HOOQ has set out to achieve – which is to offer premium content that is not available on ad supported platforms. The good thing is that they are spending a lot of money on marketing, building content and improving technology as they truly believe in their tagline – Love Movie and Love Stories. The major challenge ahead is the need to educate their consumers in the early days on the backing of strong content and consumer connect. The need for right distribution partnerships is also something that needs to be carefully explored to make content easily and as conveniently available to the consumer as possible. These are some aspects that HOOQ would require to monitor closely to be ubiquitous in this fierce marketplace.