Mighty Little Beam

Why Netflix is betting big on India with an audacious original content play

- Rajiv Singh

OCTOBER 2019; LOS GATOS, CALIFORNIA

The proclamation was ‘mighty’. “We don’t shy away from taking bold swings if we think the business impact will also be amazing.” Netflix made this daring declaration in its latest quarterly letter to shareholders in October. The world’s biggest online streaming player was alluding to the ever rising cost of generating premium content—it flaunted its content budget of around $15 billion in cash for the year—and how the impending launch of online video platforms by rivals such as Disney and Apple would make the scramble for content even costlier. In the bargain, the American giant would inadvertently go on to offer a glimpse into one of its ‘bold swings’ and ‘amazing’ impact in one of the Asian countries it had debuted three years ago.

CUT TO MUMBAI, INDIA. DECEMBER 2016

Despite having an 11-month headstart over rival Amazon Prime Video— which entered India in December—and the popularity of American crime drama web series Narcos, Netflix was still a niche concept, confined largely to salaried corporate honchos in Mumbai and Delhi. The reason was not hard to fathom. Netflix was prohibitively expensive. While Amazon offered an ad-free, on demand service at a monthly rate of ₹41, Netflix was available at ₹500 for a month. Even Hotstar, another big competitor, now owned by Disney, had a tempting tag: ₹199 per month.