Sun TV puts plan to pump Rs 150-200 cr into OTT originals on hold again

Sun TV Network has put plans to pump Rs 150-200 crore into its OTT platform Sun NXT on the backburner yet again, with Group CFO SL Narayanan saying there are no plans to invest in original OTT content until March 2022 at least.   The South Indian network giant has been delaying the planned investments in originals for two years now and streaming its extensive TV and movie content. The management has maintained that their focus is to get their couple of big-ticket under-production ventures, delayed due to Covid, off the block before getting into OTT originals.   “Till March 2022, I don’t see us beginning anything afresh on OTT. It is going to be movies, and we believe that movies will take the Sun NXT subscription base to a different level,” Narayanan said at an earnings call on Monday.   The OTT platform had 24.5 million subscribers as on September 30, amassed largely through inorganic bundling arrangements with telecom players.   “There isn’t any OTT platform that operates on the kind of margins we operate on. We have grown this to almost 24.5 million subscribers with practically zero investment in fresh content and using recycled content. We have also seen that every time we load new movies on Sun NXT, the original subscribers that are coming on organically, not through OTT deals with other platforms, It’s been absolutely heartwarming,” he said.   When the company decides to invest in original OTT content, maybe after April 2022, the format will be somewhere in between movies and TV serials. And it will be parallel to investments in movies and regular fiction and non-fiction programming on TV, he added.   Narayanan also did not rule out collaborations with Amazon Prime Video, which recently brought eight other streaming apps on to its platform in an effort to become a super app of OTTs. It will depend on the commercials, the context and the situation, he said before clarifying that there are no such discussions at the moment.    OTT is a hotly contested space in India, with US giants Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney as well newer regional players entering the fray every few months vying for the $2.9 billion market the country is set to grow into by 2024, according to PwC estimates. India is already home to more than 40 OTT apps.   With only 353 million OTT users in the country users so far, according to a report by Ormax Media, the country offers huge scope for growth for these players, especially as smartphones penetrate deeper into the smaller towns and villages.