OTT firm MX Player, which offers users free web series, music, games and short videos, aims to grow its domestic user base by 50 million to 250 million (25 crore) this year, a top Manager.
It is a free downloadable ecosystem app where most people can enjoy content in multiple languages for free.
This year MX Player said it is trying to get at least 20% of the pie of what the other big players are getting in terms of ad sales, said Nikhil Gandhi, COO, MX Media Private Ltd.
“On our growth path towards profit, we created two unicorns. MX Takatak and MX Player for the past three years. We’re more interested in value creation than valuation,” he said.
“Our profitability is projected over the next 24 to 36 months and the scale we aim to achieve this year (2022) is the first stepping stone to that,” he added.
Mr. Gandhi said the company will expand the international presence of its local video player to more than 250 countries (about 90% of the total global base).
He claimed that MX Player, the Indian OTT major, is the largest video playback player in the world with a global base of 300 million users.
The company also plans to expand its distribution by offering OTT services targeting Indian users worldwide (diaspora) from currently around 12 countries to 18 countries.
The biggest markets include the US, UK, Australia, the Middle East and now South Asia, Mr Gandhi said.
There are also plans to add more local languages to the current content offering in 10 languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Marathi, among others.
“MX Player’s super app user base of 300 million worldwide, including 200 million users in India, makes MX Player the second largest video platform in India after Youtube,” said Mr. Gandhi, formerly of Tik Tok.
Speaking about the company’s business model, he said, “Entertainment is becoming a luxury for people as most of the leading MNC and Indian OTT players are charging high subscriptions.”
“Our business model is ad-based, although we recently unveiled a feature where consumers can subscribe to our ad-free feature by paying a nominal fee of £199 for the whole year,” added Mr Gandhi.
Explaining that the company is investing heavily in compression technology and making user experience more meaningful, he said the technology makes advertising targeted and sharp.
“We’ve already started geotagging local ads with our latest show starring Kangana Ranaut, called the Lock Upp reality show, which brought 13 celebrities together in a prison to compete,” Mr Gandhi said.
MX Player also intends to invest in content including 35 new shows following Alt Balaji’s Lock Upp and Ram Gopal Varma’s Dhahanam, including Season 3 of Ashram starring Bobby Deo, he said.
The company also plans to unveil a separate gaming app, which is currently in beta testing mode.
