Google-backed Glance launches live content platform for smart TVs

Google and Reliance-backed consumer internet company Glance has launched Glance TV - a live, interactive content platform for the home screen or ‘screen zero’ of Android smart TVs. With live content and real-time on-screen interactions for users, Glance TV is aiming to completely transform the way people experience television.

Glance TV aims to be present on approximately 30 per cent of all smart TVs in India soon. The company plans to make Glance TV available globally and also intends to develop the same for other smart TV operating systems.

Television viewing so far has been a passive way to spend time, with no way for viewers to express their reactions or interact with the content. In a world consumed by social media, television has remained at best a family experience due to absence of social capabilities.  Glance TV with its programming, personalization and strong social elements helps users break out of this passive, limited and isolated viewing experience, and become a part of the shows they watch.  

“Glance has reimagined the lock screen of smartphones into a live screen for personalised, LIVE content. With Glance TV, we want to redefine television experiences just as we did with smartphones,” said Piyush Shah, co-founder of InMobi Group and president and COO of Glance. “This is TV in a way that has never been seen before and is a true innovation that extends the Live experience that Glance delivers on lock screens to television home screens.” Technology company InMobi is the parent of Glance.

Glance TV users can interact directly in real-time with their favourite stars on their television home screens. They can attend personalised fitness training sessions, watch interactive cooking shows with celebrity chefs, or enjoy sports in community watch-alongs that replicate immersive, stadium-like atmospheres. Within shows, users can interact and shape the direction of the content through live comments, reactions, and polls. Using QR codes on live TV, users can buy tickets for movies and events, shop live, and even get their social media posts featured on Glance TV streams.    

“With Glance TV, our intention is to remove the age-old connotation of TV being an idle way to pass time and change the perception of TV as the ‘idiot box’,” said Manish Gupta, Senior Vice President and GM, Glance. “Glance TV gives users the experience where they can be active while watching TV and can express themselves directly on the big screen, within virtual communities of fellow users.” 

Glance TV will offer off-beat, personalised snackable content of 5-20 minutes duration, across categories such as sports, entertainment, infotainment, e-sports, current affairs, lifestyle, food, and fitness, unlike standardized long-form TV shows. It has partnered with major content providers that include Zee5, Epic On and Docubay to provide users fresh, personalized and premium content every day.   

The company said the launch of Glance TV is a major milestone for Glance, which has revolutionised content consumption on smartphones by bringing Live, interactive content to mobile lock screen. Launched in 2019, Glance is now one of the world’s largest mobile lock screen platforms with over 200 million active users.  

In February this year, Jio Platforms, the subsidiary of Reliance Industries (RIL), invested $200 million in Glance, in a series D funding round. Apart from this, the start-up also entered into a partnership with Reliance Retail that aims to provide Glance’s ‘lock-screen platform’ on JioPhone Next smartphones.

With this round, Glance’s valuation rose to $2 billion. Glance had raised $145 million in December of 2020 from Google and existing investor Mithril Capital, making it one of the fastest start-ups to reach the unicorn stage.