Bharti Airtel has today announced a strategic partnership with Hotstar to bring digital content on its popular Airtel TV application. The move is meant to counter Reliance Jio, which is offering JioCinema and JioTV apps for streaming contents.
Under this partnership, Airtel customers will now access toHotstar’s 350 plus LIVE TV channels and close to 10,000 popular movies and shows from India and abroad. This will include shows from 22 channels and over 3000 hit movies and shows.The Hotstar catalogue available to Airtel TV users includes shows from channels across multiple genres, popular movies and shows in Hindi and regional languages like Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu. In addition, customers get access to an exciting library of sports content and LIVE matches as well.
Commenting on the launch, Sameer Batra, CEO, Wynk, said, “We are delighted to have Hotstar onboard as a long term partner in our endeavour to build a world-class digital content ecosystem. Their rich content library will add immense value to our content play and add to the user experience. Airtel TV’s new version has received an extremely positive response from users and we will continue to bring exciting content and in-app innovations to delight them.”
With this, Airtel is all set to compete with Reliance Jio in the digital content space as well. Reliance Jio has JioTV that offers access to over 350 channels and past 7 days aired shows. The App offers TV channels in English, Hindi and other regional languages. One can also set reminders for different shows and lock their screen for zero disturbing once the show is on. Users can also Pause/Play Live coverage and the shows can also be played on Mini-Player which is a lot similar to YouTube.
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Then there is JioCinema app, which the company claims have a collection of over 1 lakh+ hours of HD content which include movies, music videos and popular TV shows. You can also create your own ‘Watchlist’ and resume playing from where you left. There is also an option for Dock Player which lets users browse side by side while watching the content.
But Airtel surely has an EDGE here as the company recently tied up with Amazon to offer Prime subscription to its postpaid users. The company has already partnered with Eros Now, Hooq and Sony LIV, which makes it easier for users to stream different content under the same app. However, it is important to note that all content on Airtel TV app is free for Airtel Prepaid and Postpaid customers on a promotional basis till June 2018.