Hungama looks to tap online platforms

Digital entertainment firm Hungama.com said it is scouting for opportunities to sell its video and music streaming services on e-commerce sites.

The move is aimed at taking the service to tier-2 and -3 users. As of now, Hungama offers these services only through their own apps.

Hungama had a strategic partnership with Snapdeal earlier and is now looking to expand it to other online platforms. Besides playing on the pricing, Hungama said it is also evaluating the possibility of introducing a mobile wallet to create ease of transactions.

Neeraj Roy, CEO, Hungama.com, told BusinessLine , “Smartphone penetration and enhanced bandwidth connectivity will push digital music and movie business in a big way. We expect the industry to grow five-folds. This gives us tremendous opportunity to look at increasing our subscriber base”

According to Deloitte report, the online music users in India are expected to touch 273 million and digital music industry revenues are expected to cross ₹3,100 crore by 2020. Of this, the digital video subscription alone is expected to be ₹3,500-4,000 crore by 2020.

Deloitte said that marketers are also shifting their advertising spends towards digital media and about 36 per cent of their ad spend is expected to go to digital space. There were an estimated 27 million online music users in India in March 2015.

The number of online music listeners is expected to grow to 273 million by March 2020, mostly driven by the youth and also increased demand for regional content.

Hungama said it has a monthly user base of 62 million across its entertainment services. Roy said Hungama is on track to reach 100 million MAUs (monthly active users) by March 2016.

“At least 25 per cent of our user base is paid,” Roy said adding it was anticipating a huge market opportunity in semi urban and rural India, Hungama rolled out multi-lingual support in its Android app. Hungama app can support Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Punjabi besides English.

When asked how the recently launched movie streaming business was doing, Roy said it was popular among consumers . “Besides Bollywood, we are adding regional and Hollywood content. We will also be shortly launching a offline viewing service to bring more consumers into our folds. Apart from movies from Indian and international studios, we are also looking at bringing non-fiction content to the platform as well.” Hungama offers consumers an a-la-carte option, where they can pay ₹60-120 to watch a single movie.

In May this year, Hooq, a joint venture of SingTel, Sony Pictures Television and Warner Bros, had announced the launch of its video-on-demand service in India. Hooq said it will offer its services later this year at ₹199 per month.

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