Fivefold increase in online video watching in India

In the India Watch Report 2018, the digital mobile and entertainment platform Hotstar collates the changing habits of mobile users in India over the past year.

It found that the average Indian user consumes 1.6GB of data per month with 96% of viewing on Hotstar coming from videos longer than 20 minutes.

Ajit Mohna, CEO of Hotstar, said: “Three years ago, most new data users would start with messaging, do text search, move on to social platforms and a few brave ones would watch video on the mobile network. This pyramid has been completely inverted. In a world that does not fear data charges, video is very often the first port of call for new data users.”

The country’s love of cricket has been behind some of its highest views, for instance during the Champions Trophy Final 2017, India vs. Pakistan, 113 million video views occurred in eight hours.

“A new generation of users are emerging in India who take for granted round the clock access to the best stories; who know that they can watch the best shows from around the world; and who have the implicit faith that all breaking news will reach them without any effort on their part,” added Mohna.