Excl: BigFlix will remove music videos from site, to focus solely on movies

Big Flix Pvt Ltd, the digital media arm of Reliance Group, is all set to remove music videos from Bigflix.com, the company's movies on demand service. The changes will come into effect by early next month, sources close to the development told Techcircle.in.

Late last month, the company added Malayalam Catalogue of over 200 movies to its offerings, taking the total number of movies available on the site to 2,134. This includes Bengali (96), Bhojpuri (6), English (158), Gujarati (5), Hindi (756), Kannada (51), Malayalam (204), Marathi (20), Punjabi (7), Tamil (389), Telegu (354) and world movies (88). The company also claims that it is adding around 200 movies to its catalogue on a monthly basis.

It also claims to have crossed the 20,000 paid subscribers mark within nine months of operations, which is impressive, but still a fraction of the over 1.5 lakh subscribers it had when it shut down its physical distribution business late last year. The company later launched its subscription-based video on demand service.

Post that, it struck a deal with UTV Motion Pictures, partnered with VAS content and enterprise messaging solutions firm Unisys Infosolutions and also tied-up with Sony India to preload BIGFLIX Plus application in Sony Bravia Internet TV and Sony's Tablets S & P. The company also partnered with Reliance Communications (RCOM) to offer movies to all Reliance 3G subscribers at the cost of Rs 30 per movie and launched an app for the Windows Phone platform (it already has an Android and an iOS app), claiming to be the first one to do so.

But while US-based Netflix (of which BigFlix is an Indian clone) had faced a lot of problems, while making a similar transition, it was mostly smooth sailing for BigFlix (at least that it what it claims). This was primarily because the company made sure to communicate its intentions (of closing down the DVD rental business) to its subscribers well in advance (both via e-mail as well as on call). It also made sure the refunds (wherever required) happened on time and also offered free subscriptions to existing customers in an attempt to retain them.

The company faces competition from the likes of Times Internet Ltd's BoxTV, Eros Now and Spuul. In comparison, Eros Now offers both movies and music, BoxTV offers movies and TV shows and Spuul offers movies, TV shows as well as IIFA coverage.

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