Netflix yet to scale up India biz due to lack of local content: Report

With about 65 lakh subscribers in the country at the moment, streaming major Netflix has reportedly “not succeeded” in scaling up its business in the key Indian market.
Netflix’s slower growth in India is primarily owing to the lack of local content, TechCrunch reported on Friday, citing analysts at global asset management firm AllianceBernstein.

The analysts reportedly said that only “12 per cent of the titles” Netflix offers in India were local content.

In comparison, nearly 60 per cent of Amazon Prime Video’s offerings were in domestic languages in the country. Prime Video has about 2 crore subscribers in India and Disney+ Hotstar continues to dominate the market with over 40 million subscribers, said the report.

“Perhaps the lesson from India points to both the need for higher density of local-language content, but also a recognition that in many emerging markets, value is less tied to a comparison with other streaming services and more tied to a much lower cost of linear TV or Internet video,” write the analysts.

“India, for example, is likely YouTube’s largest market, and a key growth area for social media names,” they added in a note.

Netflix was yet to comment on the report.

Meanwhile, a significant price reduction in subscription tiers in India helped Netflix grow engagement in the country by nearly 30 per cent (year on year) in the first quarter of 2023. Over time, Netflix has adapted our prices to meet local needs and to further deepen its penetration, it lowered prices in India by 20-60 per cent.

“These reductions — combined with an improved slate — helped grow engagement in India by nearly 30 per cent year on year while F/X neutral revenue growth in 2022 accelerated to 24 per cent (versus 19 per cent in 2021),” the company said in its quarter earnings report.

Streaming giant Netflix is reportedly planning to increase the price of its streaming service again — starting with the US and Canada first — to make up for the revenue lost during the Hollywood strike, a media report said.

Learning from the success in India, Netflix reduced prices in an additional 116 countries in Q1. Streaming giant Netflix added 5.9 million subscribers globally in the second quarter (Q2), with the US and Canada making up 1.17 million new members in the April-June period.