I have personally been a big fan of Chromecast and have been using it for over a year. When I bought, it had to be imported from US, or you had to request your friend to get it when traveling back to India.
Over past few months, many ecommerce sites started making it available in India, however, all of them were imported from US and then sold.
But no more.
Google has now officially launched Chromecast in India for a price of Rs. 2999/-. Interestingly, if you buy it in US it costs you USD 35, which come to roughly Rs. 2200. Given the import duties and taxes, a price of Rs. 2999/- seems to reasonable, though slightly on the higher side.
If you are not aware of Chromecast, check out this guide as to what is Chromecast and what all things it can do.
Google has said they they have launched Chromecast in partnership with Bharti Airtel and EROS Now and will be exclusively available on Snapdeal.com and Google Play Store. The sale will start at Midnight that coincides with GOSF (Google Online Shopping Festival).
Given their partnership with EROS now (and others), expect Indian version of Chromecast to churn out some India focused content, though they already have 100s of Chromecast apps that offer all kinds of content.
Chromecast Airtel Partnership
Interestingly, Google has partnered with Bharti Airtel to push Chromecast in India. As a part of special promotion, existing customers of Airtel who buy Chromecast will be give free 20GB per month of data for 3 months. If it is a new Airtel customer, activation charges of Rs. 1000 will be waived.
Google understands that unlike in other countries, bandwidth and data is a big issue in India. With Airtel partnership, they have smartly ensured that many consumers may adopt Chromecast due to free bundled data.
Chromecast Experience
I use Chromecast daily – primarily to watch videos on Youtube. However, over last few months many new features have come to Chromecast, including screen mirroring which I think is quite awesome. You can do whatever you are doing on your mobile or tablet on big TV screen. Apart from it, Chromecast has number of apps which allow you to carry out various activities. It also has a nifty Chrome extension which enables you to cast your chrome browser screen directly to chromecast if it is on the same network.
Infact, I also use it watch movies, videos, pictures from any device on the network and everything works absolutely flawlessly!
Over 60 percent of my TV viewing is on Chromecast.
Chromecast Apps
Like most other Google offerings, Chromecast has it’s own open source SDK (Software Development Kit) and app developers can integrate their existing apps that will enable them to cast their content on large TVs.
Like I mentioned previously, already 100s of Chromecast apps are available on Play Store, and with it launching in India, I am sure many Indian app developers will bring in their own Chromecast enabled apps!
I have said this previously, and I am saying it again – Chromecast is one of the most “Value for Money” devices out there. Just get it, you will love it.
[BTW, there is Indian startup which has developed a very similar device called Teewe, specifically targeting Indians. Check out our review of Teewe as well]
[…] has officially launched much awaited Chromecast in India for a price of Rs. 2999/-. The device is launched in partnership with Airtel and Is exclusively available on […]
Local merchants on Ebay are selling it cheaper than the launch price. Moreover, considering netflix hulu wont be working in India,all it can be used is to stream media from youtube and files from your laptop through mirroring. Installing multiple apps for multiple channels also becomes tedious and irritating. Infact an Indian alternative of Chromecast, Teewe, solves all the provlems which chromecast is addressing in just a single app, with a price just below 2k. I’ve been using it for than a month now and the performance of device us pretty good. It has a number of free content as well as allows you to stream your local files without hassle.