Can STAGE break the mould of hyperlocal OTT platforms in India?

The streaming business in India is a showreel with many jump cuts. There are far too many players with far too little success.

Almost everyone in the industry today alludes to the fact that the Indian OTT space has many “distressed assets”—some waiting for the next funding round, while others are lining up potential buyers. And then there are the gigantic mergers that are fast wiping out any semblance of healthy competition from the market. There are only a handful of pan-India players remaining today, all of which continue to bleed cash, but it is more often than not the smaller, regional OTT platforms that get the short end of the stick.

Despite showing initial promise, banking on India’s enormous linguistic and cultural diversity, most local language streaming operators today are cash-strapped and battling through shelved projects and fast-shrinking content pipelines. “Some of the southern ones are up for sale and have had talks with one or two of the major national players which are beefing up their regional libraries,” an industry executive aware of the development tells The CapTable.

“Regional OTTs haven’t scaled beyond a point. Only Hoichoi (Bengali) and Aha (Telugu/Tamil) are the two big local players that have managed to crack a sustainable business model. It also helps that they are vertically integrated with large film studios,” he says.

Profitability, though, is a far-flung dream when viability itself is up for debate. “It’s an industry where you spend Rs 1,000 to acquire a single customer who leaves after paying you just Rs 99. The math doesn’t add up,” shares another executive.