The Anil Ambani Group has relaunched Bigflix, the homegrown competitor to Netflix, with an expanded focus covering regional language content as well as an eye on audiences outside India.
The service will have 2000 HD movies in nine Indian languages to start with, the group said.
These languages are Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Bhojpuri and Bengali. The content owners who are on the platform include Dharma, Disney, Viacom, Phantom, Telegu One and Rajshri, the company said.
“With its multi lingual library of 2000+ HD films, including latest films, BIGFLIX aims to put an end to piracy and poor quality film viewing,” it said.
“The indigenously developed technology of BIGFLIX will deliver a personalised theatre experience to users who can stream and download movies advertisement-free, on any Internet-connected device including personal computers, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs and game consoles,” it said.
India is seeing a strong expansion in both the supply and consumption of entertainment content — particularly video — over the Internet.
Over the last one year, Netflix and Amazon Prime have launched their services in the country, while the pioneer Hotstar from the Rupert Murdoch group, has also spruced up its offerings.
Reliance Jio, a 4G operator that is largely responsible for the boom in Internet-based content consumption in the country, also has its own Jio Cinema app which offers videos on demand.
While Netflix costs Rs 500 per month, Amazon’s Prime Video is available at Rs 499 for the first year. Bigflix costs Rs 50 per month for its full-access package.
“Indians are moving to digital entertainment in a big way with consumption growing on daily basis,” said Shibasish Sarkar, Chief Operating Officer, Reliance Entertainment.
“Notably, BIGFLIX will fill in the void created by the decline of the home video market by digitally delivering movies.”
Bigflix claims to have 3.9 million registrations and offers feature films, short films, devotional, and movie trailers.