Netflix co-CEO says India investment has had US$2 billion impact

[SEOUL] Netflix said its production investment in India generated US$2 billion in economic impact from 2021 to last year, underscoring the country’s growing importance for the US streaming giant.

Viewership of Indian content rose to more than three billion hours in 2024, co-chief executive officer Ted Sarandos said at a government-led media conference in Mumbai on Saturday (May 3).

“I think India is on the cusp of a very big inflection point for storytelling,” Sarandos said, likening India’s momentum to South Korea’s propulsion onto the global entertainment stage following the success of the dystopian survival series Squid Game. “The things that have proven to be the most global have been the things that are the most locally authentic,” he said.

The world’s largest video streaming platform has been consolidating its position as a premium service in the US$28 billion Indian media and entertainment market, where competition between domestic provider JioHotstar and US rivals such as Netflix and Amazon.com’s Prime Video is intensifying.

In an effort to diversify its content offering in India, Netflix has been ramping up South Indian titles in languages such as Telugu and Tamil that reach broader audiences beyond Hindi-based Bollywood film fan bases.

The US streaming giant has produced local content in more than 100 cities in India with more than 25,000 crews from the region, Sarandos said.

Economic impact is a term used to describe the total effect of a policy or activity on an economy. BLOOMBERG