This article is more than 2 years old.

September 19, 2018 This article is more than 2 years old.

Indians are lapping up online videos—but with a jugaad that saves them a lot of money.

Almost eight in 10 subscribers of Amazon, Netflix, and Hotstar in India share their subscriptions with family, friends, and even colleagues, a survey by research and consultancy firm Pixights has found. The survey included 1,830 respondents across Delhi NCR, Lucknow, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Kolkata.

Netflix allows up to four people to share one account, while two titles can be streamed at the same time on different devices. On the other hand, Amazon Prime Video allows two adults to share its membership programme and add up to four child profiles. Besides this official allowance, people can also sign into the same user profile from different devices.

Shared or otherwise, Indians are exploring the depths of web content in a big way.

Splurging on OTT

On average, Indians spend Rs295 per month on an over-the-top (OTT) platform, Pixights found. And a majority of Indians, 62%, subscribed to three or more such platforms.

A meagre 3% watch free content, such as shows on Voot or the first few episodes of a series on AltBalaji, but don’t subscribe to any service.

Overall, Indians prefer OTT to television now because of the flexibility and convenience it offers, along with a wide array of content.

And with the country’s increasing internet usage, one player has emerged as the leader in this overcrowded market for giving the most bang for the buck to its users.

Amazon on top

Pixights found that 38% of respondents said that Amazon’s Prime Video was their favourite OTT platform.

Launched in December 2016 in India, Amazon Prime Video has quickly become popular particularly for its pricing, which is cheaper than that of many other OTT platforms. For instance, Netflix’s cheapest package costs Rs500 ($7.78) a month, while Prime’s annual membership costs Rs999.

While the annual subscription prices for local OTT platforms like Star India-owned Hotstar are at par with Prime Video, the latter has a wider range of popular foreign content that appeals to English-speaking Indians. In addition, Prime Video is rapidly adding more vernacular shows and movies to its catalogue—even producing originals in Telugu and Tamil.

And neither is Prime’s subscription limited to just video content. It offers free two-day shipping on various goods sold on Amazon.in and audio content available on Amazon Music.