Content consumption tripled in India: Hotstar

Content consumption on Hotstar grew three times, while the time spent on its platform doubled in 2019 compared to the previous year, boosted by regional content and non-metro users, the OTT player said in a report.

During the India-Pakistan match held during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, Hotstar saw 8,000 installs per minute, it said in its India Watch Report released on Tuesday.

“The platform’s reach during VIVO IPL 2019 was comparable to the entire population of the United States,” the report said.

Viewership on Hotstar mirrored the trends on TV during the 2019 cricket season as the OTT platform witnessed more than 400 million downloads, becoming one of the most downloaded apps in India.

The report says that 95% of the video consumption on Hotstar’s platform comes from mobile phones. Amongst the smartphones that users access the content provider on, Xiaomi took a leap replacing Samsung at the pole position; followed by Vivo, Oppo and Motorola. While for Smart TVs, Android TV’s growth in the last one year was higher than that of Fire TV Stick. Hotstar saw four times growth for connected TV compared to last year.

The study revealed that more than 40% of video consumption comes from regional content with top watched languages being Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. It also found a link between IPL matches and regional content consumption. For example, consumption of Tamil content doubled during the Chennai Super Kings matches, where as consumption of Bengali content jumped about one and a half times during Kolkata Knight Riders matches.

“Today, the Indian consumer enjoys a plethora of content to choose from, has moved beyond metro cities, and isn’t limited by gender or language. More importantly, this growing accessibility has opened doors to new thoughts and ideas that are shaping a stereotype-defying consumer,” Varun Narang, chief product officer, Hotstar, said.

Hotstar also said that 63% of its total video consumption comes from non-metros. Its data reveals that Lucknow, Pune, and Patna are the top cities that consume its content, whereas Gurugram is the last city to log off at 3:04 am followed by Mumbai, Kochi and Kanpur.

The most-watched show during the year, according to Hotstar, was Game of Thrones with peak viewership at 6:30 am — live with America’s time. It had seven times more consumption for the show on the Hotstar app as compared to television and most of the views came from Delhi, the report revealed.

More than half of the news viewership came from people in the age group of 15-34. Total video news consumption grew tenfold compared to last year, with Delhi, Lucknow, and Patna being the biggest consumers.

“The accelerated growth of the Indian video entertainment ecosystem has had an unprecedented impact on the consumer. Hotstar, with its tremendous scale and reach across the country, is well-positioned to better understand this evolving consumer,” Narang said.