India's OTT video revenues reached $529 million in 2017, so overall a CAGR of 30.4% to 2022 is now predicted for the sector by the analysts.
Much of this growth has been attributed to Reliance Jio, which in 2016 introduced disruptive mobile broadband pricing. As of 2017, Jio claimed customers consume 9.6 GB of data per month, driven mainly by video.

The operator currently offers its prepaid customers 2GB a day of 4G data, which is "democratising bandwidth-intensive services like video viewing", wrote Brice Longnos of Strategy Analytics in a blog. "With its suite of entertainment apps, including live-streaming and video-on-demand services JioTV and JioCinema, being available for free, Jio has created a comfortable environment for consumers to growth their video consumption over mobile broadband," added Longnos.

Jio's rivals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone are, in response, now also offering competitive mobile broadband pricing, which is providing greater opportunity in India's OTT sector. For example, Airtel is providing its post-paid and pre-paid customers with free access to Airtel TV until June 2018.

Times Internet, the digital publisher and subsidiary of The Times of India, is looking to re-enter the market, following its acquisition in January of Korean video player app MX Player; Alibaba, which owns China's VOD platform Youku Tudou, is aiming to launch its own Indian VOD service; and Facebook is preparing the roll-out of Facebook Watch to India by March 2017.

They are all focused on ad-funded models - mobile video advertising is expected to grow at a CAGR of 72.6% between 2017 and 2022.
"Times Internet, learning from the failure of subscription VOD service BoxTV, may focus on leveraging its 270 million monthly visitors base, while Alibaba has a powerful gateway for browsing and payments, and Facebook hopes to replicate the success of Watch in India, where it has 1 million more active users than the US," wrote Longnos.

Excepting Viu and Viacom18's VOOT - which is adopting a web-based approach - most of India's OTT players have now teamed up with a range of telcos to deliver their content to wider audiences. For example, Bharti Airtel has deals with Amazon Prime Video, fastflimz, ZEE5, Eros Now, Hotstar (for Airtel TV), HOOQ, Sony LIV, Netflix (for Airtel Digital TV). Vodafone India has partnered with ALT Balaji, Amazon Prime Video, ZEE5, Eros Now, HOOQ, Hungama Play, Netflix (for Vodafone Red customers) and YuppTV. Meanwhile Reliance Jio provides ALT Balaji originals, Hotstar (via Jio Play) and Jio TV.

Through telco partnerships and increasing local content offerings in local languages, India's subscription-based OTT sector is also set for an upward trajectory, according to Longnos.

Although only 3% of India's population subscribed to a VOD service in 2017, Strategy Analytics predicts that mobile video subscription revenues will catch up with ad-funded models and reach $317.1 million at the end of 2022.