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By Shilpa Jamkhandikar
MUMBAI (Reuters) – In southern India, loyal enthusiasts worship film and tv stars as gods, erecting huge statues of milk-dipped actors as part of prayer rituals for a film’s success.
This is the market that Netflix Inc, a streaming laggard in India, now wants to tap into. It offers a diversity of Indian films in regions to present, however, for TV series, something essential to retain the audience on its platform. it has only a few successful screens in Hindi and no television screens in regional languages.
The Us company has greenlit at least six SOUTH Indian language TV screens this year, aggressively dealing with Tollywood, as the Telugu film and television industry is known, as well as the Tamil film and television industry, with six others. people familiar with the company’s business plans told Reuters.
As prolific as Hindi Bollywood and known for its eye-catching, action-packed content, the South Indian film industry has done incredibly well lately, dominating Indian box office earnings so far this year.
Netflix “has had meetings with almost each and every manufacturer and filmmaker here. You’ll see the effects of those meetings over the next year,” said one of the people, a Producer from Tollywood. All the resources spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing they would miss out on painting opportunities.
Netflix has long ranked India, with a population of 1400 million, as a key market. In 2018, two years after its launch in the country, CEO Reed Hastings predicted that its next hundred million subscribers would come from India. But so far, it has only five to six million, according to analysts’ estimates.
By Hastings’ own admission, Netflix has been frustrated by its lack of good fortune in India for its other markets. This new southward momentum also comes at a time when the search for expansion is taking on a new urgency.
The streaming giant surprised investors last month when it reported a quarterly net loss of international subscribers for the first time in more than a decade, and predicted bigger losses to come. Its inventory has lost almost a portion of its price since then.
SMALLER THAN ITS RIVALS
In India, Netflix outperforms rivals in terms of percentage of profits in the subscription video-on-demand market, with a 39% share in 2021 versus 23% for Disney Plus Hotstar, its closest rival, according to Media Partners Asia.
But analysts say its subscriber base is too small to feel comfortable. In addition to Netflix’s 5 to 6 million, Disney Plus Hotstar, which owns the rights to stream cricket, owns about 50 million. Local rival Zeefive has around 20 million and analysts also estimate that Amazon Prime and SonyLIV subscriber numbers are above Netflix’s numbers.
That of the Indian market “cannot be underestimated,” says Julia Alexander, chief strategy officer at Parrot Analytics in the United States.
“If Netflix doesn’t try to leverage it by building stronger relationships with local creatives, studios and local production corporations and carving out a genuine position for itself in India, the rest will,” he said.
Asked by Reuters about complaints about its functionality in India and its push into regional languages, Netflix said it was confident in what it called a “long-term winning strategy in India. “
“India continues to be a great opportunity for Netflix to invest and grow, whether in terms of club and the variety of content we offer our members,” he said.
A big component of Netflix’s problems have been its much higher costs in an incredibly cost-conscious market. It cut its rates late last year, making it more competitive but even more expensive than its competitors.
It costs Rs 649, around $8, a month for its highest quality streaming service plan that allows it to be used on up to four devices. A Disney plan costs Rs 299. Netflix’s mobile-only plan for a device is Rs 149 for a month, while Disney charges the same amount for 3 months.
Netflix’s logo as a premium service would possibly make it reluctant to cut costs further, but that means its best, if not the only, path for significant subscriber expansion is to expand its diversity of TV shows, analysts say.
However, according to two sources from Indian producers, Netflix tends to take much longer than its rivals to order screens and less to provide feedback to content developers.
Netflix responded to this complaint in its reaction to Reuters.
Even with new South Indian screens added to its channeling, Netflix still lags behind its rivals. For example, last month Amazon announced 22 new original TV screens, adding 8 in Tamil or Telugu.
“Netflix lags behind Amazon, Hotstar and SonyLIV because it’s still in the start-up stage, while the others already have screens or are about to launch,” according to one manufacturer who said it was in talks with Netflix.
($1 = 77. 7050 Indian rupees)
(Reporting via Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai; Additional reporting through Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing via Edwina Gibbs)