Indian video-on-demand platform Voot which is owned by Viacom18 is all set to foray into the International market by launching its services in the United Kingdom in November 2018.
The service will be launched as a paid service in the United Kingdom, in a partnership with Virgin Mobile. In the initial stage, it will be exclusive to Virgin Mobile users in the country and will be later available to all users through the Apple App Store and Google Play store.
The company has further not revealed any information about the deal. Viacom18 is a 51:49 joint venture between Reliance Industries and US media conglomerate Viacom.
“Owing to the last mile measurability that the medium provides, our entire content strategy is based on a deep data-backed analysis of the needs and desires of our consumers and their consumption preferences and patterns,” said Monika Shergill, Head of Content, Viacom18 Digital Ventures.
In India, Voot was launched in May 2016. The company is also ramping its slate of original series on the service with 18 new multi-lingual series across various genres including Psychology, Mystery, Sports Biopic, Comedy, Drama, Thriller, Politics, History, Crime and Suspense among others.
Voot also stated that its movie studio Viacom18 Motion Pictures will be producing these original series under the banner of Tipping Point Films.
Along with the original content, the company is also diversifying its content offering by adding up live news from Viacom18’s network of channels. The service will provide 16 live news channels across 13 languages.
“Furthermore, the inherent synergies with Reliance Jio, both as a platform for showcasing content and as a carrier of our service, have only dialled up the business roadmap for VOOT“ said Sudhanshu Vats, Managing Director, Viacom18.
Voot competes with various video-on-demand service companies such as Hotstar, ALT Balaji etc. It was in September last year that Hotstar launched its service in the United States and Canada, whereas Balaji Telefilms’ ALTBalaji is available in 200 markets across the world.