Tata Play steps out of India with a solution that global OTTs need

In an industry-first move, Tata Play has ventured out of India with a white label solution for global OTT aggregators, starting with a project collaboration with Philippines’ leading Pay-Tv provider Cignal TV.

India’s leading content distribution platform today launched the Tata Play Binge PaaS for OTT aggregators across the globe, enabling Tata Play to provide end-to-end development and deployment opportunities.

“Apart from providing the software architecture, our partner companies will also benefit from Tata Play’s learnings over the years in areas of forging commercial partnerships, recommendation engine, subscription management, analytics, and much more. With the launch of this enterprise solution, we have now created a unique OTT content aggregation and distribution ecosystem,” said Harit Nagpal, Managing Director & CEO of Tata Play.

Coming from the house of conglomerate Tata group, Tata Play Binge is an OTT aggregation service that brings content from more than 26 apps in one app.

The promoter company now focuses on tying up with various OTT partners and acquiring subscribers in the overseas market. Tata Play will manage the end-to-end technology platform, over the cloud, the company said.

While the Indian company started with Philippines’ Cignal TV, Nagpal told ET Online that the company is actively engaged in talks with many other players across the world who are keen to take Tata Play’s tech solution to evolve into OTT aggregators.

“We are having conversations with many potential aggregators across the world. It is not limited to one continent or one part of the world. Since this is on the cloud you can service Africa, South America, South Asia, Europe, anywhere,” said Nagpal.

Tata Play Binge has about nearly a million subscribers on it now and there have been huge learnings in terms of technology, in terms of user interface, in terms of experience and everything else, Nagpal said, adding that across the world many players were struggling to find such solution, which Tata Play will now offer.

“Every country is trying the same things. So, we said, since we have the backend already and we have spent the money, time and effort in building the solution, then why not we become the backend for somebody who wants to aggregate anywhere in the world,” the official said.

While this is a start, Nagpal believes the new tech solution offered by them to the world may take some to be an acceptable way of watching on OTTs.

However, the solution also offers economies of scale to all OTT players that come under one roof and is a win-win for all stakeholders including Tata Play, who gets to charge a fee for the tech solution it is providing.

While there is a general lull in paid TV subscribers, according to various research reports, the OTT market is fast evolving to be a lucrative one with rising user base. Tata’s entry into the global market with the PaaS solution thus comes at an opportune time that may help the company add incremental revenues or even get a first-mover advantage.

Also, if aggregation becomes a worldwide phenomenon and more people see the benefits of an aggregated single subscription, single screen, single contact kind of a product, then Tata Play can perhaps benefit if it can capture more markets.