Vodafone India has partnered with video on demand (VOD) platform HOOQ to add video content onto Vodafone Play, the telco’s content streaming app. Through the tie-up, popular American shows like The Big Bang Theory, Arrow, The Vampire Diaries, Gotham, Supergirl, Friends, The Flash among others will be added on the Vodafone Play.
Note that the Vodafone Play app is accessible only to Vodafone India customers. Apart from video content, it also aggregates Live TV, popular TV shows, movies and trending music tracks. The telco also has a content streaming partnerships with Eros Now and a tie up with Amazon for offering Prime Video to its customers for a discounted subscription price of Rs 249. While Prime Video’s competitor Netflix has tied up with telecom companies including Vodafone, Airtel and Videocon D2H for preloading Netflix app, and for carrier billing.
On the other hand, HOOQ was launched in India in May 2015, and was created through a joint venture between Singtel, Sony Pictures Television and Warner Bros. Singtel is a Singapore based telecom service provider, which also happens to owns a majority stake worth $659.51 million in Bharti Telecom Limited— the holding company of Bharti Airtel in India. HOOQ also has carrier billing tie ups with Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea in India on both prepaid and postpaid plans.
Since its launch in 2015, the VOD platform has been stepping up its content portfolio. Last December, HOOQ added DC television shows—Super Girl, Flash, DC Legends of Tomorrow and Lucifer to its library, exclusively for its Indian audience. To tap into more users, it tied up with ACT Fibernet in September last year, to offer free access to HOOQ for a month.
Telecom companies in India are investing more into content as a method to garner new users or retain their existing subscriber base. Airtel had earlier tied up with video streaming provider Ditto TV and online publisher Juggernaut Books for content. Its competitor Reliance Jio has a video streaming app JioTV which aggregates movies, TV shows, etc. Jio also claims to have a library of 10 million tracks in 10 languages under JioMusic service. While Idea has recently launched a bouquet of online streaming services including video and music.
