India’s streaming landscape has continued to grow at pace, with the country’s Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming audience reaching 547 million viewers this year. According to the Ormax OTT Audience Report, the market penetration of streaming services in urban and rural parts of the country climbed to 38 per cent, up from 4 per cent last year.
This growth, however, was largely driven by the ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) segment. In contrast, the report indicated a stagnation in paid subscriptions this year.
Indian viewers are increasingly frustrated with OTT streaming content being scattered across numerous platforms. Amid a fragmented OTT ecosystem, media tech startup Streambox Media looks to address consumer pain points such as subscription and selection fatigue with its newly launched collection of television models called Dor.
The main draw is that consumers do not have to buy Dor TVs; instead, they can subscribe to them. The 4K QLED TVs sold by the Micromax-backed company are powered by an operating system built from the ground up called DorOS.
DorOS brings together content from 24+ OTT streaming apps, 300 television channels, live channels, news platforms, games, and more under one roof. The subscription-based OS “ensures an intuitive and unified viewing experience for consumers, eliminating fragmented navigation across multiple devices or apps,” Streambox Media said.
“Every OTT app actually does a fabulous job of managing their content within their ecosystem. Can there be a platform that sits on top of everything and does the same for your home? That’s the core theme of DorOS,” Anuj Gandhi, the CEO of Streambox Media, said at the launch event in Mumbai on Tuesday, November 26.
Speaking to indianexpress.com, Gandhi outlined convenience and search capability as the central value propositions of the new offering.
‘Convenience platform at OS-level’
Streambox Media describes DorOS as a hyper-personalised platform that looks to help viewers cut down on the time they spend deciding what to watch. “When you sit down before the TV to eat your dinner, you’ve already finished your meal by the time you decide what to watch,” Rahul Sharma, the co-founder of Micromax, said on-stage at Tuesday’s launch. He added that a viewer on average spends around 18 minutes searching for content to watch.
“The problem statement for us was how do you navigate and find the content. The whole ecosystem right now is very fragmented. You have to buy a TV from one place, a set top box from another, subscribe to different OTT apps, etc. So, we thought, why can’t we combine everything into one box and make the whole thing as easy-to-use as ABC,” Sharma further said.
Newly launched Dor TV showcase at the launch event in Mumbai. (Image credit: Streambox Media)
With DorOS, viewers will be able to directly land on the content without going into the OTT streaming app. Its single sign-on feature ensures that viewers are not hit with login screens when trying to access the content. Elaborating on the backend process, Gandhi said, “Every piece of content is deep-linked. If you see a movie on the homepage and hit Watch, the content will start playing. While content from top apps are deep-linked, content from other OTT apps play from our player itself.”
However, he said that on-boarding new OTT apps takes up a lot of time.
“Tech integration and single sign-on is doing the heavy lifting for any such product. Every piece of content, I need to ingest as a catalogue. Then, I have to build a database around it. Then there is single sign-on. I have to share the API data on the backend. All that takes a lot of time. It has taken at least 18 and a half months to get all these apps onto DorOS. If you look at the market, it is only telcos and we who have done this,” he explained.
Besides convenience, DorOS also has powerful search capabilities that makes content across multiple apps searchable. “We’ve built a database of almost 5,000 hours of content. Everything is done to make it extremely intuitive,” Gandhi said.
To set up the DorOS homepage, the user has to pick languages from a list of 12. Then, they can pick the genre of content they want to watch along with their preferred actors or actresses. “You will keep going deeper in our ecosystem to set what I will call your own personalised homepage. Every app does it for their ecosystem, but there are not a lot of apps that do it at a platform-level, irrespective of the app,” he told indianexpress.com.
DorOS also lets users request content recommendations from its AI chatbot called ‘Ask Dor’. Additionally, the OS has a safe zone for kids which changes the entire ecosystem through a one-step process. The Kids page does not include live TV and news channels.
It further shows users a one-line, AI-generated description of a news programme to help them decide what news they want to watch.
Some of the OTT apps that come pre-installed on Dor TVs are Prime Video, Jio Cinema, Disney Hotstar along with Zee 5, Sony Liv, Youtube, Discovery+, Sun Nxt, Aha, Hoichoi, Lionsgate Play, Manorama MAX, Travel XP, Shemaroo, Fancode, Nammaflix, Dangal Play, Dollywood Play, Hungama, Stage, VR OTT, Distro TV, Chaupal, Playflix, ETV Win, Raj TV and more.
With the surge in the number of OTT streaming apps in India, the government has raised concerns about “vulgar” content on such platforms. When asked how DorOS ensures a family friendly viewing experience, Gandhi said, “Honestly, we are not in the content business. They are in the content business. Whatever they bring to the table, we will carry as our package. Tomorrow, if the government says to block the content, they will not approach me, they will approach the OTT app. At the backend, only they will be able to block the content since everything comes from their ecosystem through an API.”
‘India’s first subscription TV service’
Unlike other TVs, Dor devices do not come with a traditional price tag. Instead, consumers pay an upfront “activation fee” of Rs 10,799 for the 43-inch model, which includes one month of subscription.
After the first month, the subscription fee for the TV will be Rs 799 per month till the end of the 12-month subscription period. Post this, one can opt for customised packages based on their viewing preferences, Streambox Media said.
The company is relying on disruptive pricing to make a splash in the TV OS segment that is currently dominated by tech giants such as Google (Google TV, Android TV) and Samsung (Teizen OS).
“Google and Samsung don’t do TV-as-a-service and they don’t have a companion app. We are bringing many firsts so I don’t see them as competitors. They are selling hardware whereas I am selling a service, there is a fundamental difference,” Gandhi said.
Dor TVs will be available in 43-inch, 55-inch, and 65-inch variants with 43-inch units going on sale on Flipkart and other retail outlets from December 1 onwards. The television comes with a four-year warranty and is eligible for four DorOS software upgrades.
The 55-inch and 65-inch Dor TVs will only be available for purchase early next year.