The suggested growth strategy that for Disney+ hotstar
We agree that content is the king for the entertainment / OTT industry as a whole and Disney+ Hotstar could constantly evolve on globalized (Global+local) content creation to remain a notch higher in the competition.
Additionally, more buckets for subscription would help the company to target the untapped market like sports lovers, kids specials, on demand rental customer acquisitions etc.
Technical performance of the app and more compatibility with a plethora of smart devices would remain the key in future.
As a result of user research done for the OTT platform experience in the Indian market, we concluded that the majority of users prefer to watch content popular or recommended by friends. Most of the users like to go for yearly subscription and share their subscription with family and friends.
There are users who would like to watch daily soaps without ads and at their convenience.
Some of the users in the research have said the auto recommendations are not matching their personal choice. Due to overwhelming content, they have shared their frustration searching for preferred content.
This definitely calls for some changes in the way currently Disney+ Hotstar is working. Target Market for Disney+ Hotstar in India has been identified as 42.8 million. Already in India, there are many OTT services available that cater to the Indian audience. Some of them are ZEE5, Sony LIV, MX Player, VOOT.
To increase the acquisition and retain the users, Disney+ Hotstar should work on some of the pain points users are facing with respect to the platform. They should make the content search more easy with recommendations from users and also add ratings to the content This will help users to pick the content as per popular demand.
As part of a growth strategy, we should bring out new plans.
Homemaker Plan: This plan is specifically for all the busy home makers and people who like to watch daily soap at the convenience of their time. The plan will include all the daily soaps telecasted so far and also currently running on TV in all 9 languages. The content will be ad free and a new episode is available 12 hours before the telecast on TV.
This will help in acquiring and retaining users, mostly home makers who have free time in the afternoon or office goers who want to watch the shows at night without ads.
Kids only plan: Being pandemic, kids are spending most of the time at home and parents are concerned about the content available on TV. We can bring out a kids only plan that is safe for kids between the age group of 3 to 14. This plan will have all the cartoons and Disney movies. Also gives freedom to parents to supervise while kids are watching as they cannot watch any other program.
On-demand Rent Content Plan: With so many OTT in place and with each OTT having some popular web series or movies, users may be interested to watch only those shows. The On-Demand plan is specifically for these users. Gives the users the power to rent content for a few days.
Overall, if we talk about increasing the subscribers for the premium annual plan, then the price comparison can be displayed, showing the overall saving of the money.
So, this can be considered -
To increase the premium annual subscription users, savings of the money should be displayed with a price comparison of how much a user should pay for a monthly subscription and what he/she is paying for the same plan, if taken annually.
To achieve a high subscription rate of the premium plan.
Introduction of new plans can be worked on, that is the premium subscription plans of 3 months and 6 months with different pricing available options in both the plans.
NOTE:
This is an education group project and the subscription plans information is provided in the problem statement itself as a part of the educational group industrial project.
For this educational group project, we reviewed the Disney Hotstar website and app as well.
Done by Aman Verma, Swapna Kaniti, Dinesh Vemula and Amit Kumar
