iWorld
Ditto TV aims to double revenues this fiscal; plans more original shows
MUMBAI: It’s gotten late off the blocks but it sure is looking to sprint ahead and fast. We are talking about the Zee network’s digital over the top (OTT) offering Ditto TV.
Zee Digital Convergence (ZDC) Chief Executive Officer Debashish Ghosh told PTI over the weekend that his goal is to double his company’s revenue from around Rs 30 crore to Rs 60 crore this year, with almost 95 per cent of it coming courtesy subscription.
With 1.8 million subscribers on a monthly basis and almost 60 percent of them being repeat viewers, Ditto TV is present in 167 countries. Most of its consumption is however happening in India. With the exception of Star and Sun group channels, Ditto TV offers 156 channels across 13 languages. Ghosh further told PTI that almost 30 per cent of Ditto TV subscribers consume live TV.
ZDC has invested around $5 million in Ditto TV over the past three to four years, Ghosh disclosed. That is slated to go up in the coming months as it starts pumping in money into original content. The first of these is a music based show called Life is Music; other programmes are being planned in-house as well as with outside producers.
Clearly, the OTT original content space is seeing a lot of action.
Netflix is slated to launch in India by mid next year and invest top dollar in cutting edge content. Star India’s Hotstar already has an average of 20 million users every month. It has paid a fat commissioning fee to stand up comedy group All India Bakchod to produce shows running over 20 episodes. Then it has been premiering some of its big-ticket Bollywood movies and TV shows on Hotstar.
Entertainment major Eros International recently announced that the registered user base of its OTT service Eros Now has grown to 30 million as of 30 September. It has ordered six new original shows which are slated to debut soon and feature big name stars.
MSM Media’s Sony Liv, on the other hand, notches up an average of 5-7 million monthly users, and is also getting into OTT content. It is experimenting with a fiction show titled Love Bytes. Then the Viacom18 group is also pacing on the sidelines, gearing up to launch its own OTT service under the leadership of Gaurav Gandhi.
Ghosh, while speaking at IDOS (organized by Indiantelevision.com and MPA in September) said that the hyper activity is good for the OTT sector as a whole.
He further told PTI, that India is expected to have 500 million Internet users by 2017, out of which 382 million would be smartphone users, 70 per cent whom would be 3G/4G customers. And that is what is exciting the Zee TV network to further invest in Ditto TV. Add to that the prediction that almost 60 per cent of India’s population is going to below 40 by 2020, and that both wired and wireless broadband infrastructure will be in place. That’s the positive side.
“But the fact is that the OTT players will find the going challenging,” says a media observer. “At least until the numbers really scale up and bandwidth constraints and costs fall. Indian consumers are chary of paying for content, apart from cricket. Hence, Hotstar has taken the AVOD route (advertising video on demand). But advertisers and agencies have been reluctant to buy into the medium; at least at prices Star has envisaged. Eros Now has announced a multiple revenue stream offering which includes advertising, transactional (TVOD) and subscription video on demand (SVOD), with differential pricing for Indian and international consumers. Ditto TV is primarily SVOD and its growth has been limited so far. Each of them has to find a robust and sustainable revenue model.”
iWorld
Talk to your telly: JioHotstar’s new AI voice feature reads your mood to suggest shows
The streaming giant ditches the scroll for a “conversational” AI that understands moods, cricket and Hinglish
MUMBAI: The era of the endless scroll may finally be over. JioHotstar has officially flicked the switch on its “Conversational Voice Discovery” (CVD) feature, a high-tech overhaul designed to turn the hunt for a Friday night film into a natural chat. Developed in a landmark partnership with OpenAI, the tool moves beyond clunky keyword searches, allowing users to find content by describing their mood, context or even the most bizarre viewing scenarios.
The feature is vision of Uday Shankar, vice chairman of JioStar, whose goal is to eliminate “content overload” by replacing the tedious, traditional scroll with natural dialogue. By leveraging ChatGPT’s ability to grasp context and cultural nuance, the new mobile interface allows users to bypass menus entirely, turning search into a seamless conversation.
The launch, which rolled out across India this month, sees a ChatGPT-powered interface integrated directly into the heart of the app. Instead of typing “action movie” into a sterile search bar, viewers can now speak to their devices as if they were asking a well-read friend for a tip. For now, the feature is exclusive to the mobile app, with a rollout for Connected TV (CTV) expected in later phases.
Beyond the keyword
The CVD feature is built on what JioStar calls “Multilingual Cognitive Search.” It is designed to interpret nuance rather than just matching text. If you tell the app, “I’ve had a long day, give me something mindless and funny,” it won’t just look for those words in a title; it will sift through 300,000 hours of library content to find a light-hearted sitcom or a stand-up special that fits the vibe.
The tech is natively multilingual, catering to India’s diverse linguistic landscape. Users can switch effortlessly between languages—asking for “Koi light-hearted comedy dikhao” (show me some light-hearted comedy) or requesting a “Thriller hai but zyada dark nahi chahiye” (a thriller that isn’t too dark).
Real-time curiosity and live sports
Perhaps the most ambitious aspect of the rollout is its integration with live sports. During a high-stakes cricket match, the AI acts as a digital companion. Fans can ask, “Who is the top scorer right now?” or “Show me that last wicket again,” and the system will pull the relevant data or clips instantly. It even attempts to explain the “why” behind the crowd’s energy, responding to prompts like, “Why is everyone reacting like that?” by contextualizing on-field events.
A shift in streaming strategy
The move is part of a broader reimagining of the entertainment experience following the massive merger between JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar. Uday Shankar noted that the goal is to make premium entertainment “truly accessible” by embedding AI at the core of the user journey. By anticipating culture and context, the platform hopes to kill off “decision fatigue.”
For OpenAI, the partnership represents a major play in the Indian market. Fidji Simo, the head of applications at OpenAI, said the goal was to turn a “one-way” passive consumption experience into a “deeply personal conversation.”
As the feature goes live for millions of subscribers, the message from Bombay House is clear: the remote control is becoming obsolete. Whether you’re looking for a show that “feels like a rainy Sunday afternoon” or a crime series with a “strong female lead but not too violent,” all you have to do is ask.
