Digital entertainment platform Hungama.com believes as smart phones penetrations increase, the market for paid content will also scale up. The company, a subsidiary of Hungama Digital, said it is planning to take local content to Sri Lanka and West Asia among others.

American venture capital firm BVP India, along with existing investor and IntelCapital has invested $40 million in Hungama Digital, the parent firm of Hungama.com. Launched in 1999 as Hungama.com, the company has businesses in mobile, gaming, online music retail and so on. In an interview to BusinessLine , Sidhharta Roy, CEO, Hungama, said that the company will move to ‘middle India’ (tier-2 and -3 cities) with its offerings. Edited excerpts:

Most consumers are not keen to pay for content. Do you see this as a challenge?

We are the largest aggregators of content with over 2.5 million content pieces across genres in the form of music tracks, movies, music videos and mobile content.

We have over 10 million active users. We have both free and paid models. Our service is priced at ₹99. We believe the customer is willing to pay for content provided the experience is easy-to-use. While our audio content is subsidised through advertisement our video content is paid for.

How do you nudge a consumer to pay for the content?

We first provide a free service and give them an experience. This acts as a funnel to make them pay.

We have tied up with Tata Sky, Airtel and other DTH partners to expand our presence.

Connectivity is still a challenge both in terms of costs and reach. How do you address the issue?

Yes, it is a challenge. We have created concepts where a consumer can use our content, even if they are offline.

A customer can rent the concept or buy it and listen to it offline. The whole idea is to get to the customers’ wallet.

Payment gateways are still at a nascent stage. How do you get consumers to spend money?

Our intention is to get more paid users. We have billing relationships with 15 players. Plus the customer can pay using the operators wallet, both pre-paid and post-paid.

We have integrated with all operators. The operator wallet is something like the top-up that you do.

You can use it to convert it to buy a value-added service like ours. Playing music while offline is important for India, because of high data cost. We are also looking at alternative wallets like Itzcash or Oxygen or even a tie up with bankers. The eco system has to evolve.

What is the roadmap for growth?

Smartphone eco system will move to the middle India (smaller towns). The language of choice will not be English, but regional. We will undertake lot of innovation on that front.

We are also getting curated radio at the click of a button. We are looking to get movies on the mobile.

We work closely with Universal Music.

We are also aggregating music and taking it live to markets like Sri Lanka and West Asia.

Video will be a consumption driver for us, as Indians don’t just listen to music, but also like to see it.

Any sense on investments?

We will be investing across spectrum. We invest about 15-20 per cent of our total revenue on technology and new innovations. Currently, our largest revenue comes from providing services to broadband, followed by mobility and then DTH. We have grown 100 per cent since the last year. We cannot give out our numbers as we are a privately held company.

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