Why Amazon Prime Video and ZEE5 are keen on video rental business

Today, nearly all the OTT players fall somewhere on the ‘freemium’ spectrum, where some content is behind a paywall and some is available free to watch, but with ads interspersed between them. 

In the race to crack the right revenue model, platforms are also making a pit stop at transactional video-on-demand (TVoD) services, where viewers are provided limited-period movie rentals at prices lower than full subscription fees. ZEE5, for instance, has rentals ranging from Rs 29 to Rs 349. ZEE5 Chief Business Officer Manish Kalra says this is how cable TV and DTH evolved when it went behind a paywall—through bundles, sachets and configurable price points. “We want to scale up our TVoD services this year because that gives viewers the option to sample a lot of content. Pricing is important, but right now the focus is on expanding the market and building the subscriber base.” He adds that rentals bring in a low, single-digit percentage of ZEE5’s total revenues. Amazon Prime Video also permits users to rent movies. “The thought is simple: expand the choice available to our customers through industry-wide collaborations, and make streaming an even more convenient experience,” says Sushant Sreeram, Country Director at Amazon Prime Video, India, about its marketplace hub—Prime Video Channels and Movie Rentals—which provides access to content beyond the Prime subscription. 

But TVoD has a flirting audience, and it is riddled with the discomforts of using OTPs and credit cards with every use, says Chrome’s Krishna. Kalra likens it to the FMCG industry’s successful attempt at expanding into the rural markets with the Rs 1-shampoo sachets. “Does TVoD get me more of those subscribers, or does it take away from the annual subscribers? We’ll learn,” he says. 

To be sure, the SVoD market is poised to grow as the Indian OTT market expands. But an estimated 50-75 per cent of SVoD revenues come from telecom bundling now. “Most subscribers [for OTT platforms] come from bundling with telcos, where you have a lot of people in a telecom plan. But how many people activate their accounts? What is their engagement?” said Monika Shergill, VP of Content at Netflix India, at an event in Mumbai in May. “It’s early days for the industry, but it’s not as early to become responsible in terms of what model of streaming we are building,” she added. 

And with the economics of streaming only content pinching hard, OTT platforms are now looking beyond video to give more bang for the Indian viewer’s buck. Amazon Prime Video’s shopping benefits give it a huge edge over rivals. In fact, the platform says India has amongst the highest proportion of Prime members who stream Prime Video every month. Reliance Industries-backed JioCinema, meanwhile, has access to the over 400 million telecom subscribers of Reliance Jio. And Netflix, considered a niche platform with its 6 million-odd subscribers, is betting big on gamifying its popular original series such as Narcos and Stranger Things. “Those who don’t have a content-plus edge will either combine or collapse,” says EY’s Media & Entertainment Leader Ashish Pherwani.