iWorld
Brightcove powers SonyLIV
MUMBAI: Cloud services provider for video Brightcove Inc has announced that it powers, Sony Pictures Networks India’s over-the-top (OTT) service SonyLIV. With several of the country’s top-tier media companies as customers, Brightcove has partnered a wide range of broadcasters, publishers and OTT services as they seek to launch and monetise their online video experiences.
Brightcove has been a long-term partner of SonyLIV, powering OTT video delivery for various national and international sporting events such as La Liga, Serie A, WWE, NBA and the Australian Open.
Monetised with a combination of advertising, subscription payments, and pay per view offerings, SonyLIV offers an array of movies, TV shows, sports, music and original content to more than 30 million viewers. The Brightcove video platform underpins the on-demand video experience on SonyLIV, ensuring a high-quality viewing experience for Indian audiences across devices including web, mobile, and connected TV screens, a release issued by the cloud services provider stated.
Sony Pictures Networks India EVP and head (digital business) Uday Sodhi said, “The launch of a low-cost, high-speed mobile internet service in 2016 saw online video consumption surge up to five times in India, transforming the OTT landscape. For SonyLIV, the cornerstone of our strategy has always been to seamlessly deliver the best video streaming experience to our audience, and Brightcove is one of the key technology pillars in this strategy. Brightcove has not only provided a robust and highly scalable video platform to manage our OTT services, but has also brought deep video industry expertise to help us evolve our offering in a highly competitive Indian market.”
“Internet users in India are predicted to cross the half a billion mark by mid-2018. With more users coming online, long and short form video consumption is likely to skyrocket, and force a shift in how media companies package, deliver, and monetise their content,” Brightcove’s Asia general manager Ben Morrell said.
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e-commerce
Visa report tracks rise of India’s affluent, experience-led spending
Affluent base doubles to 130 lakh, travel 58 per cent of elite spends.
MUMBAI: In India’s new luxury playbook, it’s less about owning more and more about living better. A new whitepaper by Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) maps a decisive shift in India’s affluent economy, where spending is becoming more intentional, experience-led, and closely tied to personal identity rather than pure income growth.
Titled India’s Affluent Economy 2025–2026, the report draws on a Visa-commissioned Yougov study and VisaNet data across travel, dining, retail and lifestyle categories. The headline number is hard to miss: individuals earning over Rs 10 lakh annually have nearly doubled from 69 lakh to 130 lakh, significantly expanding the country’s discretionary spending base.
But it’s not just about scale, it’s about behaviour. As consumers move up the affluence ladder, discretionary categories are taking a larger share of credit card spends, positioning cards as key enablers of premium, lifestyle-driven consumption.
The geography of wealth is shifting too. Affluence is no longer confined to metros such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, with cities like Ahmedabad, Surat, Jaipur and Lucknow increasingly mirroring metro consumption patterns.
The report highlights a clear pivot from ownership to access. More than 50 per cent of affluent consumers now use cards for elite memberships, while 7 in 10 are drawn to limited-edition drops and curated collections. Increasingly, luxury is defined by seamless access be it concierge-led travel or curated dining where time saved is as valuable as money spent.
Spending patterns reinforce this shift. Among the ultra-elite, travel accounts for 58 per cent of discretionary spends, far outpacing retail and luxury combined at 28 per cent. Cross-border spending penetration stands at 63 per cent, signalling a growing global outlook among India’s affluent.
Closer home, indulgence is becoming routine. Nearly 4 in 5 affluent consumers dine at premium establishments at least three times a year, while 1 in 4 visit luxury venues more than five times annually. Dining spends are also climbing, with Rs 20,000 emerging as a new entry-level benchmark per experience and Rs 50,000 marking premium territory.
Retail, meanwhile, is becoming more selective. Three in four affluent consumers make a high-end purchase at least once a quarter, while one in four shops premium every two weeks. Luxury retail intensity is also rising, with 2 in 5 consumers spending over Rs 5 lakh annually, and a smaller but significant segment exceeding Rs 10 lakh.
Technology and wellness are carving out new roles in this ecosystem. High-end gadgets now see average spends of Rs 60,000 or more per purchase, while ultra-elite consumers are eight times more likely to visit spas and show five times higher engagement with cosmetic stores than non-affluent groups.
The broader takeaway is structural. Affluent consumers are no longer buying products, they are buying ecosystems. Integrated experiences across travel, dining, wellness and payments are becoming central to how this segment lives and spends.
As India’s affluent base expands beyond metros and aligns more closely with global consumption patterns, the real opportunity lies not just in size, but in speed. For brands, the message is clear: relevance will be defined by how early and how seamlessly, they plug into this evolving lifestyle economy.
