- OTT Platform, Viu, the video-on-demand service of the PCCW Media group headquartered in Hong Kong, will shut down its operations in India.
It has been announced that Viu, the video-on-demand service of the PCCW Media group headquartered in Hong Kong, will shut down its operations in India.
The decision was announced today at the Mumbai office of the firm, according to sources. Viu began operations in India in 2016 and is available in 17 markets in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and South Africa.
A statement from Viu said, “Viu has gained considerable momentum hitting MAU 36 million across 17 markets over the past four years. In this time, Viu has emerged as one of the top leaders in the OTT industry in South East Asia, the Middle East, and South Africa. India is a large potential market, but also complex and difficult. So we’re pausing to make additional investments in India. We prioritize our investments to South East Asia, Middle East, and Africa to further secure our leadership and sustainably achieve rapid growth. “OTT platform Viu follows a’ freemium’ model, enabling users to access such content free of charge, while exclusive content can be accessed after subscribing to a plan.
Viu is an over-the-top (OTT) video streaming service headquartered in Hong Kong from PCCW Media, a subsidiary of PCCW. Operated on a dual-revenue model consisting of subscriptions and ads, Viu provides content in various genres from Asia’s top content providers with local language subtitles, as well as original production series under the initiative ‘ Viu Original. ‘
Indian OTT market is growing by huge numbers. Online video streaming has hit an all-time high as the world now binge-watches for six hours and 48 minutes per week— with Indian binge-watch an hour and 45 minutes longer, bringing the same estimate to eight hours and 33 minutes far behind the global average, a new report by edge cloud service provider Limelight Networks said on Thursday. According to the “State of Online Video 2019” research report by Limelight Networks, time spent on binge-watching is also increasing in India, jumping from last year to an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes at a time by more than 23 million.
Shutting down Viu is gonna hurt the loyal fan base of the app and the OTT followers but the reason given by the company goes well that it wants to invest in the other regions of Asia.
