Netflix is trying hard to crack the Indian market. Ever since the US streaming giant entered the country, it has been hard at work to make an impact. And over the years, they’ve learnt a thing or two about how the Indian streaming space functions.
Netflix is also not shy about expressing how it sees India as its last growth market. Most of the other geographies have saturated their reach to a large extent, but India has always been a pain point for it to get a leg up on. So much so that the then CEO, Reed Hastings, expressed his frustration about why they weren’t able to crack India during an earnings call in 2022.
But from then to now, Netflix has managed an interesting turnaround by climbing down the pricing ladder on its subscriptions in India, even as it raises its prices in North America, and throwing in a somewhat limited regional and diversified slate of shows into the mix.
However, Netflix is clear on one thing: it sees India as its last growing market and expects to add 100 million paying subscribers to the country. But for that to happen it has to put in a lot more work and now it faces the added pressure of competing with the merged entity of Jio Cinema and Disney+ Hotstar which would create a mammoth of a content library stacked with regional content, endless range of movies and prestige television, and the massive distributional heft Jio brings to the table.
All of this begs the question, given the situation, how seriously is Netflix looking at India as its last growth market?
To discuss this, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar are joined by Kunj Sanghvi, who is the Content and Creative Head at Kuku FM, and Nishad Kenkre, who is presently an Operating Partner at Verlinvest. Nishad has previously worked at Swiggy and was also Director and Head of Strategy at Disney.
Welcome to episode 11 of Two by Two.
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Additional reading:
>Netflix house will let you experience your favorite shows, movies in real life
>Netflix climbs down India’s ladder
Addtional listening:
Why couldn’t Stripe become the Stripe of India?
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Two by Two