YouTube plans to come on TV soon

Google is making a big push to boost YouTube usage in India and is in talks with direct-to-home cable providers to bring the service to televisions screens, its global director of platform partnerships, Francisco Varela, said.

Varela, who is on his first trip to India, said the country was among the video service's fastest-growing markets and that talks were on with partners to boost usage further. Strategically, YouTube is an important part of Google's revenues, which crossed $50 billion (about Rs 3.1 lakh crore) in 2012.

About 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube and about 100 hours of video are uploaded to the service every minute. "When we talk to direct-tohome providers or television makers or device makers, it's so that you can watch YouTube on every screen you have, in a fully scalable way," Varela told ET.

Varela declined to name the DTH providers he was in discussions with and would only say the company was working on a tie-up "as soon as possible". The video platform receives more than 55 million unique monthly users from India, up from 15 million in 2011, a number set to grow as internet and mobile penetration in the country rises.
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