Over the top growth: OTT subscribers up 20% this year to 424 million, says Ormax

• From 2021 to 2022, India witnessed a 20% growth in OTT audience.
  
• Nearly half of the OTT audience watches online videos on free streaming platforms, including YouTube.
  
• As per the report, the top six metros contribute 33% to total paid subscriptions in India. However, metros only contribute 10% to the total OTT universe in India.

From Netflix to Disney+Hotstar, several platforms are available these days, and the pandemic certainly led to more people joining OTT platforms in India. Consequently, the Indian OTT audience universe currently stands at 424 million people, according to The Ormax OTT Audience Sizing Report 2022. Of these, 119 million are active paid OTT subscriptions in India.

Despite the cinemas reopening, India’s OTT universe grew by 20% from 2021, as per the report. In fact, according to Ormax Media, 3 out of 10 Indians watched online videos at least once in the last month.

“Now that we are in a more settled, post-pandemic period, this annual report is an important reckoner for the OTT industry to understand how their audience base is growing and where this growth is coming from,” said Shailesh Kapoor, founder & CEO, Ormax Media.

Metros have reached saturation

While the top six metros contribute 33% to total paid subscriptions in India, they only make up 10% of India’s OTT universe.

"The metro cities have reached saturation levels, with more than 79% OTT penetration. Platforms will have to rely on the smaller markets for the next growth phase," Kapoor added.

As per the report, India currently has 49 million paying (SVOD) audiences. SVOD refers to Subscription Video On Demand. However, not all individuals viewing paid content are paying for it themselves.

According to Kapoor, “the average number of subscriptions have remained static at 2.4 per paying user. This suggests that subscription growth will come from more people paying for subscriptions than the same people paying for more subscriptions.”

Additionally, half of the audience (43.5%) watching videos online uses free streaming platforms (YouTube and others). In fact, the report states that the segment that only watches videos on YouTube and/or social media platforms has witnessed the highest growth, having grown by 25 million in size.

The research sampled 13,500 users across rural and urban India between July to September 2022.

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