Uday Reddy, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, YuppTV
The media and entertainment industry is witnessing a rapid digital transformation with the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) solutions. These solutions have revolutionised the way in which content is produced, transmitted and distributed. The growing shift towards digital media is also driving the uptake of cloud and big data analytics. Experts in the media and entertainment space talk about their IT strategies, emerging technology trends and plans for upgrading their ICT infrastructure…
What are the emerging technology trends in the media and entertainment industry? How are organisations in this space embracing digitalisation?
The means of content consumption has transformed dramatically over the past decade. The current changes that are taking place in the media and entertainment space are in line with user preferences. Further, key players in the industry are investing in data sciences to best understand user behaviour from multiple demographics and geographies. Meanwhile, the industry is witnessing an increased demand for shorter and crisper content, ranging from short movies to web series. Advertisers too have understood this change in consumer dynamics and are looking for creative placement of their products and services. We are, therefore, witnessing an increased push from advertisers to include their product within the content or web series.
What are some of the IT/telecom solutions deployed by your organisation? How have they helped in enhancing business performance and efficiency?
In bringing YuppTV to Indian audiences, we realised early on how the internet infrastructure (which is still at a nascent stage) can be a hindrance to providing a smooth user experience. To tackle this issue, we opted for the adjusted bit-rate technology, which delivers a smooth experience in spite of the internet speed or downtime. This enabled us to reach out to newer markets and enhance our subscriber base.
What are the challenges faced in deploying new technologies and managing the existing IT and telecom infrastructure?
One of the major challenges that we are facing in the over-the-top (OTT) space is the fragmentation of the devices available. There has been major consolidation in the mobile devices market, thanks to Apple and Android. But the connected television and OTT set-top box market is still very fragmented. In order to overcome this, we adopted a multi-packaging approach wherein we encode the content into multiple streaming formats and maintain separate deployments for each type of device.
What is the scope of big data analytics, cloud and IoT technologies in the media and entertainment industry?
These disruptive technologies have laid the foundation for expanding the reach of OTT services. Owing to IoT, the industry is booming with a number of highly innovated, connected devices that facilitate remote media consumption of OTT services. These connected devices enable us to maintain a large data set of new and existing users. Big data analytics helps in turning that massive data set into actionable information. This enables us to deliver content that meets customer needs, understand their behavioural pattern and make personalised recommendations. Together, these innovations help in delivering a simplified and personalised experience to users.
What are some of the IT initiatives that you plan to take over the next few years?
Cloud-based technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are the two major focus areas for us. We are moving our entire IT infrastructure to the cloud as it offers more scalability and facilitates faster adoption of new technologies. Meanwhile, we are witnessing a paradigm shift in the TV watching pattern. The line between liner TV content and catch-up TV content is blurring. To this end, we aim to use AI and machine learning technologies to make channel content more discoverable and give control back to the user.
