ANYTIME, a Video on-Demand (VOD) channel headquartered in Singapore with licensing partners in Australia, Taiwan and Thailand has announced today that they have signed a five year distribution deal with IOL Broadband to provide Video and Gaming on-demand content via IPTV in India. The ANYTIME Channel is expected to go live in December 2006 and will carry a mix of new and library titles from 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Sony Entertainment, Warner Brothers, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, among others. IOL will be distributing the content to via MTNL and BSNL’s IPTV services. IOL has also acquired rights to around 1000 Indian films and will also offer music, news and sports as part of its VOD service. The service will initially be launched in Mumbai. I spoke to ANYTIME CEO Craig Zimbulis on the phone yesterday, about their plans for India:

Could you elaborate on the deal with IOL Broadband? Is this an exclusive contract?
Well it’s the same as our deals in other countries: basically a revenue sharing deal with minimum commitments from IOL Broadband. None of our deals are exclusive, and we are carrier agnostic. We’ve got two carriers in Taiwan and two in Australia, so we are open to more deals in India.

What convinced you about IOL? Also why did you choose IPTV over alternatives like DTH which currently has a greater reach in India?
DTH limits the consumer proposition as opposed to IPTV and we need a platform which can evolve to provide the consumer with as many services as possible, and IPTV does that. We become a part of an on-demand channel, a part of the solution. VOD is the most efficient system from the retailers perspective. IOL’s product is scalable and we acre confident about the integrity of their solution. If you see our site, we’ve recommended certain vendors in our Technical Partnering Program, and IOL has partnered with them.

Do you think the deal is a little premature, given that in India, regulations related to IPTV are still being worked out? One doesn’t know if IPTV is under the Cable TV Act or under the Unified Access Service License?
Well, we’ve struggled with regulatory issues in every country that we’ve operated in. Video on Demand is simple: It’s just transfer of data. It is what is being demanded: it’s not broadcast. One thing that we are sure of is that it will happen.

What kind of challenges do you think you will face in India and what lessons do you bring from your experience in Singapore and Taiwan?
We’ve learnt a lot in the other markets that we’ve been in: we need to make sure that we get the technicals right before the product is rolled out, and we’re confident that IOL will do that. One main lesson is that consumers want content after they’ve tried it, so we plan to make it available on trial. For assessing the demand we will need IOL to give us timely feedback. We work with our partners to help grow the space, and ensure that the carrier promotes our content. ALso, a lot depends on all of IOL’s partners having compelling content; churn happens if you aren’t able to provide compelling content.

Could you elaborate on the gaming channel?
At ANYTIME we’ve got games that are both free and premium. We might be looking at packages of 12-20 games, or even unlimited game packages. We’ve signed a distribution agreement with Accedo Broadband for our games channel and India is going to be the first country where our games will be launched.

What kind of targets have you set in terms of subscribers and revenues?
We’re not a public listed company, maybe we will be in the next couple of years, but for now we can’t disclose the revenue targets. In terms of subscribers we’re looking at signing up 300,000 to 400,000 subscribers in the next few months. The movies will be at around Rs.75-90, so you can do the math.

Isn’t that high, given that DVDs in India are being rented out at around $1 each?
Price sensitivity varies from market to market. We’ll be revising the prices depending on the market situation; this is just the introductory price. Also, we’re providing streaming content via the Set Top Box and it’s convenient for the consumer. We think people will be willing to pay for convenience. Retail stores still do well in spite of supermarkets because they deliver and people are willing to pay for that.

It seems to me that marketing is critical to VOD. How do you create the need for on-demand services?
We’ll be offering free trial packs: you give content free and once you get the user to press that red button, it becomes habitual. You can’t go to his living room and press that button for him, so we create a landing page with previews, which is critical. Once hype gets generated, people will buy. For creating a need: we get involved in the marketing and we’ve done different things in different countries – we send program guides, physical mails, e-mails. We change content being previewed depending on the time of the day; more family oriented content during the holiday season. We’ll also be refreshing the content available regularly.

How do you see the VOD space developing? What about user generated content, free-on-demand or even Indie Films like what GreenCine does, via this platform?
The global trend is of a sense of community being created and we’re all for that. People want to send their movies and home videos to others using the platform, and there are Indie films being distributed elsewhere in the world. But we’re not in that yet. We might look at variable billing models and subscription content. Also, we might allow content to be gifted using our platform, but there’s a lot to be done before that.

(Ed: You may take a look at the GUI for the VOD service here and here)