Eros Now, the OTT arm of Eros International, said it will be building its content platform around the parent firm’s content library of Bollywood titles, besides creating a slew of originals.
The company said it plans to launch six to eight original shows beginning this April.
“We are a home-grown platform. Eros has a huge library of content especially of Bollywood films. We will be showcasing these on Eros Now. Besides working on original content in English and Hindi, we are also looking to develop digital first movies,” Ali Hussein, CEO, Eros Digital, told BusinessLine .
The company said its active user base stands at 80 million registered users.
This includes five million paid subscribers globally as on December 31, 2017. This number has gone up from two million in the corresponding period year ago.
Eros Now was launched in 2015. It competes with players such as Netflix, Hotstar, Hooq, Amazon Prime Videos, Sony Liv and Zee5.
Hussein said the company was betting big on the growing appetite for digital content and exponential growth in data consumption. He said Eros Now was getting its distribution in order to scale up the business.
“We have already partnered with Amazon channels in the UK, Roku in the US and T-Mobile. We want to be platform agnostic,” he said.
The company also has partnership deals and wallet integrations with Airtel, Idea Cellular, Reliance Jio and Vodafone.
In 2016, Eros Now had raised $30 million through a private placement and the funds were primarily for expanding Eros Now.
Asked about its pricing strategy, Hussein said that the company will maintain ₹99/month pricing to attract more users.
Hussein did not divulge on the investments the company plans to make for content creation or marketing.
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