Online Video Content Thrives Thanks To India’s Small Towns: Hotstar Report

India's popular online video platform Hotstar released the Hotstar India Watch Report 2018, which unfolded some very interesting statistics. India’s online video consumption rose almost five times in 2017. While metros only witnessed a 3.5 times increase, the biggest jump, 4.3 times, came from smaller cities that have a population of between 1 lakh and ten lakhs.

According to the report, 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. There has been an exponential increase in the number of users that stream videos on smart phones. Nine in 10 Indians watch videos on their smartphones, Hotstar’s report said.

Small town netizens often stay up as late into the night as their Metro city counterparts. In fact, on average, residents of relatively smaller cities like Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur and Maharashtra’s Pune stay awake far later than those in bigger urban centres like Bengaluru and Mumbai. Of all the states, the time Jammu & Kashmir spent watching videos increased over eight times in 2017. Sikkim followed with a seven-fold growth rate. Other northeastern states like Assam and Manipur, too, expanded their video watch-times significantly.

Narcos & Stranger Things have a huge viewership among India's youth. These youth don't miss out Hindi drama completely. The report stated that 26% of those watching Game of Thrones also watch Hindi TV shows. Online video streamers are no longer restricted to short videos. A daunting 96% of Hotstar subscribers regularly watch videos that are 20 minutes or lengthier.