I&B Minister invites e-Vision to India, assures policy support

New Delhi, March 27:  Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Anurag Thakur, on second day of his visit to Dubai, met CEO of e-Vision, Olivier Bramly and invited his company to India, assuring policy support if required.

E-Vision, Etisalat's TV arm, provides content from Major Hollywood studios, Bollywood studios and the latest Arabic productions. It has developed a unique "turn-key" end-to-end OTT video proposition including OTT platform, CDN, content aggregation and operations.

During the meeting, Bramly gave an overview of Etisalat to Union Minister Thakur.

He said that the company has over 150 million subscribers in MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. In the UAE, they are majorly into IPTV and also have been growing strongly in the OTT segment. The company is also investing into sports channels.

Bramly mentioned that India has many opportunities but there is an issue with the "complexity" of their project and time to market.

However, he expressed interest towards Indian content and also mentioned about the issue of piracy of Indian content in MENA through piracy apps.

Tata Play CEO Harit Nagpal, who was also part of the meeting, invited e-Vision CEO to visit Mumbai and experience Tata Play's concept of "Binge TV". He mentioned that Tata Play is ready to provide the hardware and middleware to e-Vision and to collaborate to bring the company's concept to India.

Hungama Digital Media founder Neeraj Roy proposed that e-Vision can telecast the major programs of 75 years of India's Independence called Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav to UAE and other countries of the region.

Meanwhile, Thakur mentioned key areas that can be looked into broadcasting schedule programme of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav and Indian content creation in Arabic language.

Sanjiv Shankar, Joint Secretary (Broadcasting), Ministry of Information and Broadcasting was also present during the meeting.