OTT player Spuul eyes diaspora to ramp up Tamil content

Started in 2012, the Singapore-based player has a catalogue of more than 1,000 movies and over 10,000 hours of programming – available to users all over the world. Spuul’s site and app feature free, ad-supported videos, paid subscriptions and pay-per-film titles for rent. In an interview, Rajiv Vaidya, the CEO, talks about catering to the Tamil diaspora and the potential in this region.

Spuul is a leading Over the Top content (OTT) player for Indian and regional content and has over 47 million registered users in the Middle East, the UK, North America, Australia, New Zealand, South and SE Asia and India. It is also one of the OTT players to offer the largest movie catalogues in terms of regional movies. Besides India, Tamil content is consumed by Indian diaspora as well. The highest demand for Tamil content comes from USA, followed by Singapore, Malaysia, UAE and UK. There’s a great demand for Tamil movies, amongst the South Asian community and the rest of the diaspora across the world.

Considering viewers like to consume content in their preferred language, Spuul’s library currently displays more than 1,000 movies, that includes popular Hindi blockbuster movies, classics and regional movies in languages like Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Bangla, Bhojpuri and Telugu. We have around 70% of male viewers and female constitute to 30% of the viewership. Majority of our users are between the young age group of 18-34 years of age, followed by the older age groups.

Currently, we are focusing on audiences residing outside of India when it comes to Tamil language content. But soon we will offer content specific to India as well. We are working with some leading distributors and partners from Tamil Nadu. Needless to mention, we would be expanding on this vertical in future, as we see demand from the markets we operate in.

It’s no surprise that the OTT market in India is on the rise. Co-existence of several OTT players that suit various demographics and preferences is what is seen. There has been an interesting shift from AVOD (Advertising Video on Demand) to SVOD (Subscription-based model), within the Indian user base. It’s always a tricky transition and lot of business experimentation, and innovative distribution partnerships with OEMs, telcos, wallets are helping OTT players reach critical mass. The Indian market for OTT has just begun evolving. So, there is a lot of markets to grab. We will look at custom created content at an appropriate time and in the right form which suits us.

The Tiny downloads option is one of our most appreciated features in low bandwidth areas and among users who are cautious about data usage. The downloads are of less than 60 MB for viewers in low bandwidth areas and is supported by adaptive bitrate functionality to ensure the quality of video and download streams are adjusted according to the users’ internet connection. Not every user needs a data-intensive full 1080p resolution video on a phone with less than 5-inch screen. We realised this early on and made this feature available long back and is available across content for our users.