Netflix said it is looking to make its service competitive in India to attract more viewers and grow its subscriber base.
This move comes at a time when video streaming services are witnessing a surge in content consumption and subscription growth as people are confined to their homes due to the lockdown.
Netflix added a record 15.8 million paid subscribers across the world in the quarter ended March 2020, bringing its global total base to 182.9 million. Of this, 3.6 million member additions were from the Asia Pacific region. The company doesn’t provide a country-wise breakdown of its member base.
“We have been working really hard to try and make our offering in India more competitive, more attractive to members and members-to-be, and there’s a bunch of different product features we’ve been doing, partnerships and payments integrations,” Netflix chief product officer Greg Peters said in a post-earnings interview on Wednesday. He, however, didn’t disclose any further details.
Netflix, which competes with players like Disney+ Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, ZEE5 and Times Internet*-owned MX Player, had debuted a low-cost mobile-only plan for the India market at Rs 199 per month in July last year, which has since been rolled out into other Asian markets like Malaysia and the Philippines. It has also piloted discounted long term subscription plans as well as free content access to non-members in the country for a limited time.
In December, the Los Gatos, California-based streaming giant had announced plans to spend Rs 3,000 crore on content programming in India in 2019 and 2020.
“We’ve seen big growth in viewing in India and have had great success on our local originals there, that have really been driving a lot of engagement in local content on our India service,” Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said in the earnings interview on Wednesday.
“We’re growing the business across the board in terms of content and content taste including licensed, original, international, and domestic content. La Casa de Papel was a huge hit in India for us as well as most of our other originals out of the U.S.,” he added.
In a letter to shareholders, Netflix noted that while productions have been stopped across the world, it has a large pipeline of content that are either ready for launch or in post-production when the filming was stopped across the world.
It will, however, temporarily reduce the number of product feature tests, while continuing to release key features like improved parental controls earlier this month.
Netflix also warned that the subscriber surge in Q1 could come at the cost of slower growth in the coming quarters once the lockdown restrictions are lifted in each country.
“We expect viewing to decline and membership growth to decelerate as home confinement ends,” the company said in its shareholder letter.
For the quarter ended March, the Asia-Pacific region recorded $484 million in revenue, up from $320 million in the corresponding quarter last year. Total revenue grew to $5.77 billion from $4.52 billion in the same quarter last year.
*Disclosure: Times Internet owns ETtech.
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