After two months of launching in India, US-based video streaming company Netflix says it will look to localise its services here. In an email interview to The Hindu , Jonathan Friedland, chief communications officer for Netflix, said the company is planning achieve this through local languages, payments and more Indian content.
What has your India presence been like?
It’s been good. Indian consumers are getting to know Netflix and the exclusive, original content they can only find on our service. Interest is wonderfully high in Daredevil S2 , which premiered at midnight in India at the same time as fans from the US to Japan, and from Argentina to Norway, were able to enjoy it.
Any particular reason you seem to be focused on early adopters?
Our service is available in English, and can only be paid for via credit card, Paypal or the iTunes store. Over time, we hope to localise the service with languages, payments, and more Indian content. First, we have a lot more to learn about what Indians like to watch, and how they like to watch.
You have adopted your global pricing strategy in India as well, making your service costlier than its peers. What would be your differentiator?
Netflix is a high-quality service with content consumers can’t find anywhere else. We compete by making our service consistently better in every dimension: more content, better streaming performance and smarter personalisation are things we work on all the time.
Will you look at exclusive regional content for the Indian market?
We are looking to make exclusive programming in India, but it’s still early days. Recently, as you probably know, we have licensed for global distribution, the film Brahman Naman by Bengali director Q, which premiered at Sundance.
How do you plan to position yourself against rivals like Eros Now, Hotstar, and others?
We aren’t rivals. Each service offers a different proposition to consumers, and there is room for plenty of subscription video-on-demand services as consumers shift from linear to Internet TV. The presence of multiple services is great because it gives consumers more choice.
We have a lot more to learn about what Indians like to watch, and how they like to watch
Jonathan Friedland,Netflix
