Star India’s online streaming platform Hotstar has added 4,000 hours of Malayalam content including movies and popular TV shows across genres to its library, reports Indiantelevision. The company has also appointed Mohan Lal as its ambassador for Malayalam. The company claims to have 50,000 hours of content in 8 Indian languages.
Subscription service
Last month, Hotstar launched premium subscriptions for Rs 199 per month offering exclusive selection of movies and TV shows, including the new season of Game of Thrones, which is apparently uncensored on the app. As of now Hotstar distinguishes paid content with a premium tag over such listings. It lists 31 HBO original shows, most of which are paid. Hotstar had tied up with HBO to stream HBO’s original content on the platform in December last year.
Star India debuted Hotstar in January last year. In November 2015, it began its international expansion by entering the US, UK, Canada, South Africa, Germany, Malaysia and Singapore markets among others.
Exclusive cricket content: In December, the International Cricket Council partnered with Nobi Digital Entertainment as the exclusive digital clips licensee for all ICC events from 2016 to 2019. Novi is a wholly owned subsidiary of Star India, which currently holds media rights for all ICC events which take place between 2016 and 2023. As a result of this partnership, Star’s video streaming platform Hotstar will exclusively live stream ICC events and provide other digital clips through the app.
Related read: What Star India’s acquisition of IPL 2015 digital rights mean for Cricket online
Recent developments in streaming:
– Last month, ErosNow forayed into Malaysia through partnerships with two local telcos Maxis Berhad and U Mobile. The app will let users access films, music, TV shows and originals, although it’s not clear if any content will be limited.
– Shemaroo Entertainment tied up with Spuul to share their catalogs with their respective users. In March, Spuul tied up with content providers to enhance its regional content library. It added popular Malayalam movies to increase its viewership in India and the Middle East.
– Towards the end of last month, Reliance Entertainment planned to relaunch its streaming service Bigflix. Bigflix has a collection of movies in 12 languages including Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil and English.
– Hungama raised $25 million from smartphone maker Xiaomi and existing investors Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, for expanding its content library and improving its products.
– In March, Vuclip launched Viu, a video on demand (VOD) service for Rs 99 per month, in India.
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