Being the tenth-largest country for streaming services, India is set to get a new video streaming platform in Walmart-owned Flipkart. Flipkart Videos is expected to be up and ready by Diwali festivities which are scheduled in October this year and will be available to Flipkart Plus members.
As of now, there are no additional charges that a user will have to pay to access Flipkart's catalog. In an exclusive report by Moneycontrol, industry sources have cited "video" as the only thing missing from the online shopping platform.
With the addition of a dedicated video section in the Flipkart app, the company hopes to attract more subscribers. Also, signing up to Flipkart Plus isn't that difficult. One needs to shop from Flipkart and collect 300 Super Coins (reward points) after which they can join the Plus membership.
The thing to note here, however, is that this move comes in the wake of Amazon doubling-down on its original content and especially in India. The platform currently serves 13 million viewers and wants to strengthen its foothold by offering more local content. Amazon's Prime membership, however, comes at Rs 1,000 in India. And that's all the difference between a practically free group and one that asks you to pay upfront, especially in such a price-sensitive market.
Flipkart Videos will not be getting into producing anytime soon, at least that seems to be their initial plan. The platform will curate movies and TV shows from different sources.
Flipkart aims to steer into Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities with its entertainment offering as it looks to target the next 200 million potential customers in the country. The current overall revenue generated from streaming services in India is roughly Rs 4,462 crore with players like Hotstar, Zee5, ALTBalaji, Voot, Eros Now among others.
An average Indian viewer is spoilt for choices, with so many OTT platforms to choose. Flipkart Videos could carve its niche in the Indian video streaming market if it manages to bring ample titles to its catalog.
