ZEE5 may launch Hotstar VIP-like plan soon

ZEE5, the video app from Zee Entertainment Enterprises, will introduce cheaper plans soon to take on rivals in the market, company CEO Punit Goenka said. “We are working on lighter packs which we will roll-out in the next couple of months,” the CEO said. ZEE5’s annual pack is currently priced at Rs 999. Goenka was […]

Can Airtel Xstream’s open approach beat Jio’s walled garden?

When cellular telephony started in India, Bharti and Reliance took two divergent approaches towards launching cellular services — Airtel decided to focus on providing the services, leaving third party players to provide the hardware, while Reliance decided went with CDMA, a technology in which everything was more tightly controlled. Despite the obvious technological shortcomings of […]

Can Netflix avoid going Apple’s way in India?

As Netflix inches closer to saturation point in its North American home market, it is desperately looking for growth abroad. India being the only billion plus market where it can operate with ease, it is no wonder that its push is aggressive here. However, as Netflix’s market share stagnates, does it risk meeting the same […]

Zee Entertainment to spend heavily on ZEE5, add 4,100 films, 60 webseries

Zee Entertainment Enterprises, the largest Indian broadcasting company, said it plans to raise the number of exclusive movies on its entertainment app ZEE5 to 3,000 as it races to become the No.1 provider of digital content in India. The 3,000 exclusive movies would make the platform one of the biggest, if not the biggest, repository […]

Airtel, Netflix sign content-sharing, billing agreement

Airtel and Netflix announced an expansion of their partnership in India through which the telecom operator will sell and promote Netflix content to its customers. Airtel TV, the video app from the operator, will have a dedicated row of Netflix content. It is not clear how much of the content will be made available on […]

Star India’s Hotstar to share content with Airtel’s TV app

Star India’s digital business, Hotstar, will make content available via Bharti Airtel’s TV app. The companies did not clarify if all content on Hotstar will be available or not. Given that it costs Rs 199 per month to access all content on Hotstar, that is unlikely. This is the second tie-up that Hotstar, part of […]

NET NEUTRALITY: Netflix says let India decide what it wants to watch

Netflix, the world’s biggest provider of video-on-demand services, rebuffed attempts by telecom companies to control viewership of online video and said consumers must be allowed to consume any legal content on the Internet without ‘gate keeping’ or interference by telecom providers. It said its position was that “gate-keepers should not be in a position to […]

Anil Ambani group relaunches Bigflix to take on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video

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, […]

Vodafone customers to get Rs 250 cashback on Amazon Prime subscripton

Vodafone said any of its subscribers that uses its website or app to subscribe to Amazon Prime service in India will get Rs 250 cash back in the form of payment balance in their Amazon account. Technically, operators in India are forbidden from giving cheaper data access to any particular website or app, but the […]