During the pandemic, there has been an increased demand for OTT content in India. However, it seems streaming giant Netflix is having a tough time in the Indian market. In an investor call on Thursday, Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings said that the platform’s lack of success in India is ‘frustrating’. “In every single other major market, we have got the flywheel spinning. The thing that frustrates us is why haven’t we been as successful in India, but we are leaning in there,” he said.
The platform with over 222 million paid memberships worldwide saw net additions in 2021 decline by more than 50 per cent to 18 million, compared to 37 million in 2020, Live Mint reported. This also caused Netflix’s shares to sink nearly 20 per cent, wiping away most of its remaining pandemic-fueled gains from 2020.
In India, Netflix’s subscriber base is far behind Amazon Prime Video and Hotstar. Netflix has an estimated 5 million customers in the country, compared to the 46 million who subscribe to Disney plus Hotstar and 19 million to Amazon Prime Video, according to a Media Partners Asia research report in 2021.
Price wars and regional content
For the first time since its India entry in 2016, Netflix reduced its pricing in December last year. The company slashed subscription rates by up to 60 per cent to grab a larger slice of the streaming market. Netflix also experimented with the mobile-only plan to woo potential customers. “We felt it was the right time to decrease our prices there, to increase accessibility to the incremental value or features that we’ve been trying to deliver in the market to more Indian consumers,” Greg Peters, chief operating officer and chief product officer at Netflix said.
With more and more Indian films and shows releasing on OTT platforms, the challenge is to bring in more regional content and India originals that connect with a wider audience. Its competitors—Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar and ZEE5—have been focusing on delivering regional content. Netflix, too, stepped in with a handful of films and shows like Paava Kadhaigal, Navarasa, Cinema Bandi, Minnal Murali, Nayattu, Aranyak among others last year. This year, too, the streaming giant has announced a range of India originals like Delhi Crime season 2, Zoya Akhtar’s Indian adaptation of Archies, Anushka Sharma’s Chakdah Express, Madhuri Dixit’s OTT debut Finding Anamika and comedian Kapil Sharma’s I’m Not Done Yet.
India's video OTT market is expected to touch $12.5 billion by 2030 from about $1.5 billion in 2021 on the back of access to better networks, digital connectivity and smartphones, according to a report by RBSA Advisors.
The report noted that the next wave of growth in the OTT landscape will come from tier II, III and IV cities and the Indian language speaking population.
