To expand its audience across Asia, Netflix is focusing on India. Asia’s young and increasingly digital population presents an “incredible opportunity” to ramp up the company’s international subscribers, Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos said.
India is one of Netflix’s key overseas markets. CEO Reed Hastings noted earlier this year that the streaming platform’s “next 100 million” users will come from the country. Over the next few years, Netflix hopes to leverage off the country’s penchant for video streaming and add 100 million subscribers in India alone by increasing more locally produced original content that resonates with audiences both domestically and internationally.
The company announced nine new Indian originals — eight movies and one television series. “The exciting part about that is that we’re able to come in and produce locally, using local story-tellers, and tell those stories on a grand scale because we can find a global audience.
“We celebrate India with an incredible line-up of original films and series that are right now filming across India. This line-up cuts across genres from horror to fantasy and in locations from Leh to Mumbai. The breadth of stories with its local settings and complex characters is incredible and we can’t wait for people to discover and fall in love with them,” added Sarandos.
