aha
A premium streaming experience for India's leading Telugu & Tamil OTT platform — buttery-smooth playback, adaptive video, and a discovery flow built to keep millions watching.
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Overview
aha is India's premium OTT service for Telugu and Tamil movies, web series, and live TV in HD and 4K. We engineered a streaming app experience built to scale — fast to launch, effortless to browse, and resilient on everything from flagship phones to budget devices on patchy networks.
- Client
- aha (Arha Media)
- Timeline
- 18 Weeks
- Platform
- React Native (iOS & Android)
- Services
- Mobile App DevelopmentVideo Streaming EngineeringUX & DiscoveryPerformance Optimization
The Challenge
Deliver flawless, low-buffer streaming and content discovery to millions of viewers across a vast range of devices and network conditions.
Streaming at scale is a performance problem disguised as an entertainment product. Viewers abandon at the first buffer or slow load, and a catalog this deep is worthless if users can't find something to watch. aha needed sub-two-second cold starts, adaptive playback that holds up on 3G, and a personalized discovery flow — all delivered consistently across hundreds of device and OS combinations.
Our Approach
How we built it.
Cross-Platform Core
We built a single React Native codebase to ship iOS and Android in lockstep, with native modules where playback performance demanded it.
Adaptive Streaming
HLS/DASH with adaptive bitrate and native players (ExoPlayer / AVPlayer) keep video smooth as network conditions change.
Personalized Discovery
A fast, cached content rail system surfaces the right titles instantly, with continue-watching and recommendations front and center.
Performance Budgets
Hard startup and buffer budgets were enforced and profiled on low-end devices, not just flagships.
The Solution
What we shipped.
We shipped a React Native streaming app with native-grade playback: cold starts under two seconds, adaptive-bitrate video that resists buffering on weak connections, and a discovery experience that gets viewers into content in a couple of taps. A cached, edge-backed content layer keeps browsing instant even under heavy concurrent load.
Tech Stack
The Results
Outcomes that moved the business.
4.6★
App Store Rating
<2s
Startup Time
+38%
Watch-Time Lift
- Sub-2-second cold start across the supported device range
- 38% increase in average watch-time after the discovery and playback overhaul
- 4.6★ average store rating sustained at scale
- Smooth adaptive playback maintained on low-bandwidth networks