[In India
 |
Aparajita Jamwal, a yoga
instructor, filming an instructional video.
Credit Asmita Parelkar for The
New York Times
|
MUMBAI — As the morning rain dripped in
the garden outside, the yoga teacher Aparajita Jamwal got down on one knee,
stretching the other leg behind her in a lunge known as the equestrian pose.
“Imagine you’re a horse — you
have a lovely mane flowing behind you — looking up towards the ceiling,” Ms.
Jamwal urged in a soothing voice. “Take two more breaths here.” As she slid her
body into a plank pose, the director yelled, “Cut!” and everyone took a
five-minute break.
Rajshri Entertainment, the creator of this
low-budget yoga instructional video, is one of the oldest players in India’s
film industry, known as Bollywood.
While Rajshri still makes and distributes movies for the cinema,
it also produces 200 minutes of web-only video a day. The company says that the
future lies in such straight-to-digital content, which it offers free to
consumers on YouTube and similar services, paid for by
advertising.
The
13-part series starring Ms. Jamwal, a brand development consultant who teaches
yoga on the side, will be released in January on the Mind Body Soul channel that Rajshri has on YouTube.
Unlike in the United States
— where tens of millions of people pay to subscribe to streaming services like
Netflix, and customers routinely buy digital movies and shows on iTunes and
Amazon.com — free video is the norm in India.
That makes it difficult for content creators and networks to profit from
streaming and download services.
Although about a dozen local and foreign companies hope to
persuade Indians to pay for online video, changing current habits will be
difficult.
In India
Even if someone wants to buy a show, most people lack credit
cards, and there is no established alternative for digital purchases. And
roughly half of mobile viewing is done on pay-per-megabyte data plans from
cellphone companies, which adds an extra cost to video viewing.
“The Indian consumer is just
not willing to pay for content,” said Rajjat A. Barjatya, Rajshri’s chief
executive, in an interview at the studio’s Mumbai offices a few days before the
August yoga shoot.
Mr. Barjatya said his company still brought in cinema revenue
from the first few days of a film’s release, but Rajshri increasingly relies on
ads sold around its library of 100,000 online videos, which include children’s
cartoons, religious videos and behind-the-scenes interviews with movie stars.
Despite the challenges of making money in India
In February, 21st Century Fox, which owns many of India
About 35 million people have downloaded the app, and the average
user spends about 30 minutes a day on it, the company said.
Amazon, which is competing aggressively in India
Next year, Netflix plans to
extend its service to India
All of them will have to contend with Google’s YouTube, the
dominant online video service, which has operated in India
Early on, YouTube persuaded Bollywood studios and TV networks to
put material on the service free.
In India Asia , in a video interview from Singapore
Some Indian YouTube channels now have millions of followers, and
the company says the total number of hours watched has been growing 80 percent
annually. YouTube recently began allowing Indians to download and store clips
for later viewing. YouTube shares the revenue from advertising around the
clips, giving content creators like The Viral Fever and All India Bakchod a way
to earn a bit of money, although ad rates are low — from about $1 to $4 per
1,000 viewers reached, or roughly one-tenth the rate in the United States
YouTube has also trained Indian viewers to believe that video
should be free, making it difficult for anyone else to charge a fee.
Eros International, one of Bollywood’s most
prolific studios, was among the first to challenge the YouTube model. In 2014,
it introduced a streaming service called Eros
Now, which offers access to Eros-owned films as well as licensed
content.
For an extra 50 to 100 rupees a month, or about 75 cents to
$1.50, customers in India can get access to more videos and watch
high-definition, ad-free streams. (Overseas subscribers have to pay $8 a month
for the premium version.) In December, Eros will also begin allowing paid
subscribers to download videos for later viewing.
“The Indian consumer is willing to pay for more than we give
them credit for,” said Jyoti Deshpande, chief executive of Eros, in a recent
interview at the company’s Mumbai offices.
Ms. Deshpande said Eros
expected that within five to seven years, at least half of the company’s
revenue would come from streaming.
“We think this is a
game-changer for us,” she said. “Think of these next three years as a land
grab.”
The strategy is not without risks for the company, whose stock
is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Last month, an anonymous
analyst on the investment site Seeking Alpha questioned the company’s accounting
practices and prospects, sending its shares plunging.
In an email, Ms. Deshpande said the drop was a result of “panic
and fear mongering.”
“Business has never been stronger,” she wrote.
Like Eros Now, Star India figures that its exclusive,
local-language content and broadcasts of popular sports like cricket will
eventually attract paying users to its streaming service.
Right now, however, Hotstar is entirely free. Although about 100
advertisers help pay the bills, most of the company’s Indian revenue comes from
its Star television channels, so it can afford to be patient, said Sanjay
Gupta, the chief operating officer of Star India.
“We are building the habit of viewers to start consuming content
on our platform,” he said.
Getting access to exclusive, Indian-language video has been a
hurdle for the retailer Amazon, which has spent months studying how to offer
its Prime service in India, its largest market after the United States, with an
estimated 50 million customers.
Amazon has also struggled to figure out how to deliver quality
video at the low connection speeds prevalent in India
“In the absence of high-bandwidth connections, it becomes
difficult to provide a good customer experience,” said a person with knowledge
of Amazon’s India
The retailer is considering several solutions to the bandwidth
problem and intends to introduce the Prime service within the next few months,
this person said.
Meenu Handa, an Amazon spokeswoman, declined to comment on the
company’s plans.
Ultimately, it will be a long time before streaming video in India
“The amount of money to be made is very small,” he said.
