Netflix Type On-Demand Video Streaming Service Hooq Launches In India At Rs. 199 p.m

Singtel, Singapore’s leading telecom operator has launched it’s Netflix type video streaming service Hooq in India today. At the launch event, the company announced that they will offer catalogue of over 10,000 movies on it’s platform for a price of Rs. 199 per month for unlimited viewing.

While few other companies in India have launched similar video streaming service, they have not really taken off. However, given Hooq’s movie catalogue and competitive pricing, this might be the first video streaming service that may appeal to Indians.

At Rs. 199 per month, 5 devices will be allowed to stream content and two devices can stream it simultaneously. Hooq will also be giving user choice of seeing content “offline” – meaning they will be able to download content on their devices and then view it through Hooq App.

Hooq had recently partnered with Sony Pictures and Warner brother to get a catalogue of over 10,000 movies and TV services that include titles like Harry Potter, Spiderman, friends among others.

Apart from global english content, Hooq also plans to offer region content from South Asian countries like India, China, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and Korea. Krishna Rajagopalan, who heads content at Hooq said, “Our goal is to offer the best of Hollywood content along with almost all Indian movies spread across languages. We are almost 60 per cent of that target now and will keep evolving with time and based on consumer feedback and demand”

Hooq claims that they currently have access to over 5,000 Hollywood titles and over 10,000 Indian titles that will be offered to users in India. Hooq has not specifically mentioned the names of production houses they have partnered with in India for regional content. Also, Hooq plans to stay premium and keep away from content that is already available on platforms like Youtube free of cost.

The Hooq app is available for Android, iOS as well as Windows PCs. It is not clear whether Hooq supports streaming on devices like Chromecast or Roku, but if it does, users should easily be able to stream video content directly on their large screen TVs. (We will update as soon as we know more on this)

Hooq service has been specifically designed keeping Indian bandwidth restrictions in mind. Users will be able to access streaming content even at lower speeds and Hooq app will intelligently stream content based on the bandwidth available.

With Global video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu staying away from India, Hooq has a real chance of grabbing good number of users in India. They are already available in countries like Singapore, Thailand and Philippines.

Other Video Streaming services in India

India already has a few players in Video streaming space and some of them have tasted mixed success. Players operating in India include Spuul, Times Internet’s BoxTV, Zee Entertainment’s DittoTV, Reliance Group’s BigFlix among others. Star India is one of the latest entrants with their video streaming service Hotstar.com, which was widely advertised and marketed during the IPL tournament.