Driven by the spurt in smartphone usage with affordable data, especially in smaller cities and towns amid the pandemic, the OTT entertainment industry is likely to become a $15 billion market in India by 2030, a report showed on Thursday.

India's OTT entertainment industry is cannibalising on the established bastion of traditional television, radio and cinema forms of media and entertainment.

The size of the OTT market in the financial year 2020 was around $1.7 billion (both video and audio), and in the next 9-10 years, this industry has the potential to grow to become a $15 billion opportunity, according to homegrown independent transaction advisory firm RBSA Advisors.

Currently, apart from top favourites like Disney+ Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, space is seeing many local and regional OTT players, such as SonyLIV, Voot, Zee5, Eros Now, AL Balaji, Hoichoi and Adda Times, to name just a few.

"Covid-19 has changed the way audience consume media. The growing market and consumer appetite for content of choice available on OTT platforms fuelled this spurt," RBSA Advisors MD and CEO Rajeev Shah said.

"Covid has accelerated the shift in consumers' behaviour, pulling forward OTT disruption, which would, otherwise, have taken minimum half a decade," he added.

India has the second-highest per capita consumption of online videos in the world.

The average monthly data usage per user in the country increased 20 per cent (year-on-year) to 13.5GB in December last year, as Indians spent about five hours daily on a smartphone.

"Smartphones with affordable data have also brought the vibrant native speakers base of 22 scheduled Indian languages from tier 2, 3 and 4 cities online and created a massive opportunity," the findings showed.

"India is the next bastion after the US for boosting the subscriber base of international OTT players, given the highly regulated environment of international OTT players in China," NV Capital Co-Founder and Managing Partner Vivek Menon said.

Many international entrants like Comcast owned "Peacock" and HBO are sitting on the fence, waiting to make their mark in India.

"Looking at this trend as well as the rapid rise of home-grown OTT providers, this industry will continue its strong growth momentum in the years to come," Menon said.

The massive investments made by OTT services like Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ Hotstar and others in original as well as acquired content will help subscription video-on-demand make up a lion's share of the total OTT revenues going forward, the report mentioned.

"While on the one hand, short-form video content consumption on smartphones and social platforms has been on the rise, binge-watching shows on various OTT platforms have also become more common," said the report.