HER HEART'S CONTENT

From Mumbai to Madrid, Bela Bajaria steers Netflix's content strategy, betting boldly on original voices

- By Anupama Chopra

Bela Bajaria, chief content officer at Netflix and one of the most powerful women in global entertainment, is on a whirlwind tour of Mumbai. Her few days in the city include meetings with Indian superstars, attending the dazzling premiere of the platform's most dazzling show The Ba***ds of Bollywood (which marks the directorial debut of Aryan Khan) and dozens of internal meetings. But there is no sign of fatigue she says she doesn't suffer from jetlag. Which has to be a superpower in her job, which includes overseeing 27 offices around the world and making content in 50 languages. A conversation about that, and more, with The Hollywood Reporter India.

THR India: Two years ago, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said there’s no executive at any other entertainment company in the world creating global TV the way that Bela is. Because you're overseeing 27 offices, you're creating in 50 languages. How does this even happen?

BELA BAJARIA: It’s amazing. I think what is great is that Netflix is trying to do something that has not happened before. The ambition of storytelling around the world across this many taste languages and genres, like, it just hasn’t happened. And that’s really exciting. And the ambition is to entertain the world. We know people have different tastes, and so we have 27 country offices, but we make local language originals in 50 different languages in 50 different countries. And that’s so important because people want to see themselves and they want to see their own culture and language and stories represented, and they also want to watch different things from different places. India loves local film and TV, but they also love watching Money Heist from Spain and Squid Game from Korea and watching Hollywood content.