2015 was an unforgettable year Former Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan, The OTT platform was preparing for live streaming of Cricket World Cup matches. Mohan said that when he was sure he was ready, five minutes after the match the OTT platform stopped working and he was inundated with phone calls. “Of which 50 percent were abuse,” he revealed.
She recalled interacting with Ananth Narayanan, founder of direct-to-consumer fashion company Mensa Brands, at the Ascent Conclave in Mumbai.
Mohan said he believed the platform was designed to handle the load of one million users watching matches at the same time. The self-confessed cricket fan even went to Adelaide to watch the match in February 2015. “My wife and I decided to watch the match live as all the hard work was done,” he said.
However, within five minutes of streaming the match, the platform broke down as it could not take the load.
Though embarrassing, it turned out to be a turning point for Hotstar.
“We learned a lesson early on,” he shared, adding that he and his team learned to look at the bigger picture. After this incident Mohan decided to look at the full spectrum of streaming a live cricket match and started working backwards to integrate them seamlessly with each other.
“We have started working on enabling 10, 15 or 20 million users to watch matches organically.”
He said that today about 3.5 crore users watch the match on the internet. OTT platform And this number is expected to reach 200-300 million in a few years.
Mohan said that no matter how attractive a product is, the market will soon reveal its weaknesses. And this is exactly what happened in the case of Hotstar.
He concluded by saying that entrepreneurs and technologists are looking at models from the western world that can be replicated in India but the reality is that India has set a benchmark in products, technology and other areas.
Mohan left Hotstar in 2018 and headed Meta (formerly known as Instagram) as vice president and managing director (for India) for nearly four years.
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