Netflix Considers Cheaper Prices to Chase Boom in India Viewers

Netflix believes that India has hundreds of millions of potential video customers, and the company will explore a lower-priced plan to reel them in.

“We’ll experiment with other pricing models not only for India, but around the world that allow us to sort of broaden access by providing a pricing tier that sits below our current lowest tier,” Netflix Chief Product Officer Gregory Peters said on a conference call with analysts late Tuesday after the company reported third-quarter earnings.

The company may also add shows for India in languages other than English and Hindi, Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings said on the call. He cited hundreds of millions of mobile phone subscribers in the country as potential customers.

“We’ll take it 1 million at a time and figure out how to expand the market as we grow,” Hastings said. On the call, Hastings declined to provide exact details on the company’s India growth.

The rise of online entertainment in India has paralleled the growth of high-speed internet in the country. More than 150 million people in the country have high-speed internet access, often through their phones.

Revenue from “over-the-top” video services like YouTube, Netflix and others reached 20.2 billion rupees in 2017, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. By 2022, that’s expected to more than double, making India one of the top 10 markets for the services, with subscription video making up almost 80 percent of the market, PricewaterhouseCoopers said.

(c) 2018, Bloomberg