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NyooTV, India's first online social TV, that was recently launched in Mumbai by AKG Technologies, is all set to tap the 3G and BWA space, as and when services are commercially launched.
This is first Indian company to offer free premium legal entertainment content comprising Bollywood, regional and international movies, music videos, TV shows and documentaries. NyooTV's Gaurav Mendiratta - founder and president of AKG Technologies remarked, “There is a huge market for free legal Bollywood content and archived television shows on Internet in India, as well as abroad. The mobile and Internet market will witness a huge boost once the 3G and BWA spectrum is operative, which will lead to increase in speeds and a decline in the data usage charges. We are looking at a 20% share in the Indian market, which will largely depend on 3G.”
With a strong belief that social TV flavour is changing the way people watch TV, for an interactive experience, NyooTV offers an inbuilt Facebook chat and tweet option, which can be accessed simultaneously while watching a movie. This has helped the company to gain 1,00,000 subscribers in the first six weeks on the company's Facebook page.
NyooTV is now looking to foray into the mobile apps market as well, which is a hot topic in the mobile industry today, and the company is all set to launch the NyooTV application for iPhone and Nokia smart phones, while applications for BlackBerry, Android, Samsung and Windows Mobile are in the pipeline.
The company is also looking at SMS marketing, and is looking to partner with a big service provider like Reliance Communications to offer short form content on mobile on a 3G platform, and is also looking to tap HD quality on the BWA platform. NyooTV will soon offer VoD for television sets as well, by introducing NBox, using which customers will be able to record live tv, watch content from external storage media, as well as access content from NyooTV.com.
In another first — NyooTV is also the first company that will pay the user to watch content, which is of course free to the user. This is part of an interactive advertising medium, that will help to spread the user's experience to other subscribers, as well as help the company in generating content that is relevant to customer's changing tastes, based on their feedback on the interactive chat medium. This follows the belief that zero pricing is becoming a consumer expectation, due to changing economic models.
Offering a triple-play option, in that the same content is available on the mobile, TV and PC, NyooTV's other attractions include showcasing of films on the day of theatre release itself, as well as viewing of on-air tv serials, and old tv shows on the VOD platform, from the company's 2000-strong movie library. It has already tied up with Big Flicks, Rajshree and NDTV Imagine for the same. In Q4, NyooTV will showcase international film releases as well — for which it is in talks with Eros, as also live streaming of documentaries and events, with the help of BWA bandwidth.
With plans to be the largest online TV portal in India in the next two years, Mendiratta said, “In the next three weeks, we will be tying up with a major Indian TV network, and we are targeting 1 mn users in India in a year's time, and 10 mn users by the second year. We see a huge opportunity in India, due to its huge population of tv and internet users. Globally, we are looking at 10-20% more users in a year's time, with a launch in the US and UK later this month, and a later launch planned in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.”
Currently, NyooTv plays on GPRS and Wi-Fi, and has the ability to adjust its format according to bandwidth availability in a particular area, so that there is no halt in connectivity.
berylm@cybermedia.co.in