RISE OF OTT DURING THE LOCKDOWN

In the initial phase of Over The Top (OTT) platforms in India, only a speck of content represented its face. People knew about Amazon Prime Video and Netflix majorly because of their hits including Mirzapur, Lust Stories, the Family Man, and Sacred Games, but were unaware of the notion of OTT platforms as a whole.

However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, these platforms rose like the number of COVID cases. On 24 March 2020, the country went into a complete lockdown. This led to a sudden halt in almost all the industries, including entertainment with the theatres were shut and people getting confined to their homes. Underneath such circumstances, OTT content came to the public’s rescue. It emerged as a door to a whole new world of content and served people with accuracy and satisfaction during those gloomy days with its quality content and the variety available for all ages, types, and genres.

Initially, people were all for the 30 days free trials, but this time they had to come out of their cost-cutting habits and actually buy the subscriptions. According to some surveys, the average hours spent on OTT have increased from 0–2 hours to 2–5 hours daily and the usual spending that users are inclined towards falls between Rs.100–300 (per month).

Even though the situations are now slowly normalizing, the increased role of OTT continues to persist and is expected to go a long way in the future just like Guddu Pandit (a character of Mirzapur),” Shuru majboori mein kiye the, par ab maza aa raha hai”.