With the Netflix-Reliance partnership to offer 399 rupees for both movie streaming and data, Netflix may be on its way to land over 4.6 million subscribers in India before the end of 2020.
American technology and online movie streaming provider Netflix Inc (NASDAQ: NFLX) is set to push for increased market share and growth in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region by focusing on boosting local content and product specializations. According to a CNBC interview featuring Tony Zameczkowski, Netflix’s Vice President for Business Development in the APAC region, Netflix is betting big on Asia-Pacific, investing millions of dollars into original and licensed content in major markets like India, South Korea, amongst others.
The APAC region is one of the fastest-growing regions in terms of mobile services adoption and Zameczkowski noted that Netflix had observed in the past four years that the region is fast evolving into a mobile-first economy and this has informed the nature of products and offerings rolled out for consumers in the area.
As the Netflix executive noted, one of the growth measures adopted to capture the market in the region is the localization of content with subtitles in Japanese, Hindi, Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, Thai, and Korean. Besides the localization of the subtitles, Netflix also dubbed content in the respective languages. The company has invested as much as $400 in developing original content as well as licensing other contents for the Indian market between 2019 and 2020, according to the CNBC report.
The investments in the Indian market appears to be gaining momentum basically as the country trails China as the highest nation with the most number of internet subscribers pegged around 570 million subscribers according to data from Ernst & Young. The Internet subscriber’s growth rate is projected to grow at 13% annually, revealing the enormous potential in the Indian markets in particular.
Netflix has tailored unique offerings to capture the Indian market including the launch of a relatively low subscription of 199 Indian rupees ($2.68) a month. As a move to capture more of the market, Netflix has also partnered with Reliance Jio, the major provider of cheap data services in India.
“This market has been going through a fantastic transformation these past four years in terms of getting access to the internet, and making data cheaper with Reliance Jio,” Zameczkowski said, “That has been great also for us because we do benefit on the great infrastructure so that people can gain access to Netflix.”
With the Netflix-Reliance partnership to offer 399 rupees for both movie streaming and data, Netflix may well be on its way to land over 4.6 million subscribers in India before the end of 2020, according to livemint.
Netflix Growth to Take a Cut beyond India
The proposed plan to drive growth in the APAC region is not projected to come from India alone. The Los Gatos, California-based company has extensive investments in South Korea and is making moves to enter the Chinese markets despite the presence of regional competitors like iflix.
The entire foray by Netflix into the APAC region is relatively new, but the firm is optimistic about breaking new grounds. “If you look at APAC, we are still at the beginning of our journey and we still believe that there is a huge … opportunity there,” Zameczkowski said.