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Reliance Group’s media and entertainment arm on Tuesday relaunched it’s India-centric subscription-based video-on-demand (VOD) service, Bigflix, aimed at customers across South Asia, priced at ₹ 50 per month.
The relaunching of this VOD service comes in the wake of rising high-speed internet penetration and the entry of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video in the Indian market.
Originally launched as a movie-rental service, Bigflix became the first company to launch VOD services in India in 2012. However, low availability of high-speed internet and unwillingness of Indian consumers to pay for VOD were major deterrents for it.
With the relaunch, Bigflix will provide advertisement-free and high definition quality video content in nine regional languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Bengali and Tamil. Users will be able to switch over multiple devices using personalised profiles and can also download the videos for offline viewing. The current subscription rate is set at ₹50 for unlimited access. Easy availability of pirated content means that the VOD market in India is still at a nascent stage but with 4G making its entry into India sooner than expected, the number of hours spent on watching video content is set to rise further. Reliance Entertainment believes that if consumers find value in the product offering then they would be willing to pay for it.
“The objective is not to only look at Indian audience but also in the global market. There is an audience in regions such as North America and the Middle East to watch a Hindi film. The knowledge and understanding we gained over the years to map the audience will help us. And definitely the Indian market is on fire now with the internet connectivity, that will also help us.” said Shibasish Sarkar, the Chief Operating Officer of Reliance Entertainment, at the launch.
“Bigflix will provide more than 2,000 films from banners including Viacom, Phantom, Walt Disney, Dharma and Rajshri among others,” said the Chief Executive Officer, Amit Khanduja.
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