Star India Launches New Online and Mobile Video Service with Accenture Video Solution

Accenture is helping Star India develop and launch its Internet video service based on a mobile-first strategy.

Star India, one of India's leading entertainment distributors, has selected Accenture to help it develop, launch and deliver its programming from almost any mobile device to the country's digital and online consumers. This innovative service, called Hotstar, will be available to the entire Indian population when it is fully deployed.

The Hotstar service, based on the Accenture Video Solution (AVS) software platform, will be primarily funded by advertising, using the platform's new digital advertising features. Leveraging its cloud infrastructure, Hotstar will be able to serve the entire country with a catalog of more than 45,000 movies and television series.

Accenture helped Star India develop and launch its online video service to establish the country's largest online entertainment destination with a mobile-first strategy. Thanks to AVS, Star can offer its consumers professional quality content on a wide variety of devices through Wi-Fi, 4G, 3G and 2G networks, even for those with limited broadband resources, such as 2G phones.

According to Sanjay Gupta, COO of Star India, "With Hotstar, our ultimate ambition is to establish an entirely new model of video-on-demand consumption around the world. This platform will be a dramatic innovation with benefits for both users and advertisers. And Accenture has been a very valuable partner in this project. They are working closely with us to create this attractive platform, bringing in their wealth of technological and product expertise. Together we will establish very attractive reference areas for the Over-the-top (OTT) environment.”

Apart from providing services, Accenture manages Hotstar's operations around the clock using the client's local team in Hyderabad and its Accenture Global Video Operations Center in the Philippines. This service supports more than 7,000 different digital devices with its mobile platform, which provides video downloading and streaming services in all urban and suburban areas of India. With AVS's powerful analytics engine, Star will also have the ability to predict and enhance user experiences through personalized content recommendations.

Ashish Khanna, director of Accenture's Communications, Media and Technology operating group in India, highlighted that this service "is one of the first to offer entertainment, movies and sports on a single platform and for free, while promoting new consumption models. In this way, consumers can access a wide catalog of online content with interactive advertising formats that provide multiple opportunities for monetization of content for Star advertisers. We are excited to be Star's partner in providing these services.”