Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel, generally referred to as Airtel, has launched its Video Platform as a Service (CPaaS) – ‘Airtel IQ Video’. The solution, developed by Airtel’s in-house engineering teams, will basically allow entertainment companies and broadcasters to offer OTT video services with minimal investment by leveraging Airtel’s video cloud platform.
Airtel IQ is the cloud communication suite that eliminates the need for multiple communication platforms for different channels. With just a slice of code, businesses can embed communication services such as Voice, SMS, IVR, Video in their applications and digital properties across desktop and mobile, all through a unified platform.
Airtel IQ Video will work across Airtel’s data centre offerings, but is also interoperable with Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
Raj TV and Eros Now are amongst its early customers in India. CG Telecom of Nepal is also using the platform.
Varied features in Airtel IQ Video
Airtel IQ Video encompasses a variety of features ranging from app development, content hosting, curation and lifecycle management to search and discovery, analytics and monetisation models (advertising, subscriptions, transactions).
Adarsh Nair, Chief Product Officer, Bharti Airtel was quoted in a press statement as saying: “Airtel IQ Video brings an easy-to-use platform that can enable anyone to quickly build and scale their business in video streaming. This will encourage enterprises to focus on content while Airtel IQ Video anchors the end-to-end technology ensuring a great viewing experience for customers. With Airtel IQ Video, we expect to see more content startups and traditional content companies coming online and directly engaging with consumers digitally.”
How Airtel IQ Video helped Raj TV
In a nutshell, what Airtel is offering is digitising services. Traditional content providers such as regional TV broadcasters are looking to digitize their content libraries through OTT applications.
Airtle itself gave the example of the Tamil entertainment TV channel Raj TV. Raj TV had a content library of over 30,000 hours — Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam films. But most of this content was on tapes/analog formats. But using Airtel IQ Video, Raj TV has been able to digitize its content, host it on Airtel’s cloud platforms and offer it to audiences both in India and across the global through their own OTT app.
According to RBSA Advisors, India’s video OTT market is expected to touch $12.5 billion by 2030, from $ 1.5 billion, currently.
Airtel is expecting to onboard more than 50 brands on the platform in coming year.