SINGAPORE: Digital entertainment service, Hungama, today has around 54 million monthly active users, making the service one of the top five streaming services in  the world, stated the company. It now hopes to double its user-base by around this time next year.

Talking about the achievement, Hungama MD and CEO Neeraj Roy said, “We are well in line with the growing mobile and digital economy. Hopefully, by this time next year, we will have 100 million users.” Through its services, Hungama stated that it touched the lives of 250 million consumers last year.

Roy, who was spotted at the annual All That Matters conference, revealed to Radioandmusic.com that he strongly believes the milestone is the result of initiatives that Hungama began undertaking about 15 months ago. “Over the next year, we plan to continue to build on this momentum to grow into newer markets and explore more avenues to distribute digital music and video,” he said.

He also pointed out that India is an “extremely price sensitive and price conscious” country. In July last year, Hungama introduced its PRO service for Android and iOS devices, which featured integrated video and audio downloading, along with a caching feature for music that allowed users to save their music and videos so that they can be played without internet connection. Roy stated, “The space is likely to grow with an indigenous home-grown model. That is an area we have distinct advantage in.” He attributes the achievement to its Gamification model, which engages users by rewarding them.

Roy further added, “Hungama is across all touch points and formats, and even on mobile platforms. The Indian market will continue to stream and download. Our network operators are still transitioning and we still cater to audiences that use Edge, 2G and 3G and now we have LTE and 4G opening up as well.”

The fast pace of growth in mobile data adoption among consumers has allowed the company to tap into markets like metros, urban, semi urban and even rural India. He also revealed that Hungama has planned about 400 college activations and are going into 200 smaller towns and cities. Supporting Hungama in its rural India plan is its multilingual feature, in which the service is available in more than five languages- Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Punjabi, along with English. The multilingual feature was introduced in October 2014.

Roy stated that the company “is leaps ahead of anyone.” Hungama has partnered with over 150 record labels and studios in 19 languages to offer music and video to its consumers. It also had exclusive partnerships with popular artists like Yo Yo Honey Singh, Atif Aslam and others, and also with the latest Bollywood movies like ‘Roy’, ‘Kuch Kuch Locha Hai’, ‘Gabbar’ and ‘Mr.X’.

When quizzed about investment, Roy said the company is sorted and there is nothing to comment on it now.