Reliance Jio, the Mukesh Ambani-led telecom operator, has renewed its partnership with Eros International on Wednesday, and the latter's digital content will now be available to all Jio customers in the country. The content would include full-length movies, thematic curated playlists, and functions such as multi-language subtitles for movies, music video playlists, regional language filters, video progression among other things.
The move comes at a time when Jio's bigger rival Bharti Airtel is bolstering its content play with a slew of partnerships including a recent deal with Amazon for the Prime Video service. Airtel already has partnerships with Eros Now, SonyLIV and HOOQ, and it has recently made its Airtel TV app free for all of its customers in the country.
Through these content deals, both telcos are aiming to ring-fence its high-paying customers in an intensely competitive market. Notably, the content play has been one of the main key differentiators in the market.
Vodafone and Idea Cellular too have been making efforts to solidify their respective content play through various partnerships.
“Our journey with Jio has been very exciting, and we are extremely happy to renew our association. With increasing data penetration in India, our alliance with Jio reinforces our philosophy to provide the widest choice of high-quality entertainment to consumers across all platforms,” said Rishika Lulla Singh, CEO, Eros Digital.
“As we continue to enhance our leading content offering, Jio users can enjoy the full and rich experience of the Eros Now service on Jio platform. With over 160 million 4G mobile subscribers of Jio, the partnership will allow Eros to target to this large subscriber base,” added Lulla.
Bharti Airtel recently partnered with Amazon India and offering one-year of free Amazon Prime membership, taking the content war to a new level. Vodafone India is also offering free Netflix subscription with some of its RED range of postpaid plans. Idea Cellular is yet to partner with a major content provider. All the four telecom operators are battling for the top place in the content space.
