Chennai-based television broadcaster Raj Television Network Ltd on Friday forayed into the crowded regional OTT space with the launch of Raj Digital.
Started as a video cassette library under the name Raj Video Vision in 1983, the company launched Tamil satellite channel Raj TV in 1994 and then expanded it to include 24/7 music and news channels. Today, Raj TV Network has 13 channels across Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi. The company listed in bourses in 2007.
The OTT launch comes at a time when the south Indian regional OTT space is seeing an intense competition among dozens of platforms including SunNXT, aha, Koode in addition to the growing regional focus by major OTT players like Amazon Prime, Sony LIV, Zee5 among others.
M Raajhendhran, Managing Director, Raj TV Network Ltd, said Raj Digital will have over 1,000 movies in south Indian languages and Hindi besides webseries, popular TV shows and 11 live channels.
Adarsh Nair, CEO of Airtel Digital, who was the chief guest at the event, said over 500 million people currently consume content only through digital channels and 75 million consumers are paying for digital content and the number is only growing.
He added that the entire streaming infrastructure of Raj Digital OTT right from accessing the content from the cloud to streaming it on mobile is powered by Airtel.
Tamil music composer Yuvan Shankar Raja unveiled the OTT platform's logo.
Raj Digital comes at a monthly subscription of ₹29 and annual subscription of ₹299. Half-yearly subscription is priced at ₹149.