Netflix India: Market Overview & Content Strategy

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Let's jump into the Indian market and then move on to other topics. To start, could you explain how the market is structured in India and any particularities compared to other countries?

When discussing market particularities, the first is linguistic diversity. India has about 22 officially recognized languages and more than 20,000 dialects. This creates a fragmented market where content must be tailored for its target audience. While Hindi is the most spoken language, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Gujarati also have massive audiences for regional cinema and content.

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Let's jump into the Indian market and then move on to other topics. To start, could you explain how the market is structured in India and any particularities compared to other countries?

Any SVOD aiming to reach tier 2 and tier 3 cities has been mixing this type of programming in recent years. The first characteristic is language diversity, the second is family-centric programming, and the third major characteristic of this market is its extreme price sensitivity. This is due to India's low per capita income compared to the world, despite a growing middle class. But there's not enough disposable income at hand.

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Regarding the interest in international content in India, do you know the content split within Netflix? Specifically, how does local Indian content compare to content produced in the US or Europe? Are people interested in international content, or is it more focused on local content?

In tier 2 cities, people will watch shows like "Money Heist" only after they become extremely popular and are dubbed in Hindi. People do not primarily come to Netflix to watch global content; they come for local content. This is true even for tier one cities. Our research shows that people love watching local content first and expect it to have premium quality similar to global content. However, they are more forgiving of Indian content's production quality and storytelling. They are more likely to sample local content than international hits. Initially, Netflix's content strategy was about 60% to 70% global content, targeting an English-speaking audience. This changed as Hindi-speaking audiences preferred local series and films, catching up on popular global content later.

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