A Remarkable Evolution of Over-the-top Media Platforms in India: A Case Study of Business and Regulatory Trends

The Indian film and entertainment industry has shown a shift from conventional TV and big screen to Over-the-top media platforms. These platforms provide ease of access to stream anytime anywhere over the internet. With this study the researcher explored the remarkable evolution of these OTT platforms in India. To critically examine the study, the reasons of popularization of these platforms in Indian audiences were explored. As these platforms also have to face the criticism for showing inappropriate content, the researcher put insight into the regulatory changes made by the Government. The study implied that the evolution of OTT platforms started in 2008 with the launch of BIGFlix. A huge rise in consumer base had shown due to increased internet and smartphone base after 2015. The quality and creative content, youth-oriented population and lockdown due to COVID were the main reason of popularization of OTT platforms. The Government suggested self-classifying of the content and three-Tier mechanism to handle the grievances associated with these media platforms. The researcher adopted exploratory research design to have insights into the study. The secondary data from various news articles, blogs, reports, quality research papers were analyzed.