Yahoo! India launches free video service

Revving up competition in the online video space, internet company Yahoo! India today launched free online service, ‘Yahoo! Video’.

However, unlike YouTube, which also features user-generated content, Yahoo! Video would only showcase licensed and original content. In India, Google’s YouTube is one of the most popular online video sharing sites.

Yahoo has already collaborated with 35 content producers, including NDTV, Star TV, Shemaroo, Headlines Today, PVR Pictures and Ultra.

The move follows Yahoo India's launch of Movieplex, which provides users licensed full-length movies for free.

Talking about competition, Yahoo! India Managing Director Arun Tadanki said, “We will offer users licensed and original content. For advertisers, it offers an excellent opportunity to reach their target audience. We had seen that many advertisers are not comfortable placing their ads along with contents which are not licensed.”

According to ComScore , a global leader in measuring the digital world, 30 million users watch online videos every month and each user watches about 58 videos a month.

India is one of the fastest growing internet markets in the world with an user base of 100 million. According to a BCG report on the internet, around 150 million new users will be going online in India by 2015. “Online video consumption is growing at a rapid pace. However, what the Indian market lacked was a safe and piracy-free destination, delivering high quality and strictly original content," Tadanki said.

Early, this year, Google had launched the Intel-sponsored YouTube Box Office channel which features full length movies.The channel has already got over 11.5 million views in India and is the 20 most subscribed (all-time) channel in India.

"NDTV doesn't believe in walled gardens in the rapidly- expanding digital space. Early diagnosis has shown that Yahoo! does not cannibalise our business. It provides an additional audience and a new video platform that we believe users will enjoy," said NDTV Convergence Deputy CEO and Managing Editor Suparna Singh said in the statement.

YouTube, the online video platform of Google has over 19 million active users as on March, 2011. Yahoo! India Network reaches to 80.5 per cent of the Indian online population with 36.5 million Unique Users across categories like sports, news, movies, mail and messenger.