OTT will become as popular as TV cable connection now is, says Sriram Manoharan

The OTT industry in India has over 3 crore paid subscribers, and the number is increasing leaps and bounds on a daily basis.

The COVID-19 pandemic may have proved to be a tipping point for Over The Top (OTT) platforms around the world. New platforms emerged even as global players strengthened their positions. Software firm Contus is set to unveil GudSho, an OTT platform that will focus on content in the south Indian languages. , founder and MD, said OTT platforms are set for rapid growth but also that the theatre industry will come back stronger once the pandemic ends, to co-exist with OTT platforms. One of our flagship products is VPlayed, a platform that enables audio and video streaming across the Web and on mobile phones, game consoles, set-top boxes and smart televisions with multi-platform delivery, monetisation and security. It is used by customers in the fitness, enterprise and edutech space and also by OTT platforms like nvivoTV, which is sometimes referred to as the Netflix of Africa, and Heeroz, a Punjabi OTT platform, and several others across the globe. So, it was a logical step for us at Contus to enter the OTT space. Also, a lot of people have content, but existing platforms are very selective in what they buy. We thought we could give them a platform to exhibit their content. We have global players like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar, and also those operated by big TV groups such as Zee5 and Zeeplex, SonyLIV and Sun NXT, besides several other players like Voot, ALTBalaji, Viu, Airtel Xstream and of course, YouTube.