Netflix Offers Free Access For Indians, Beyond 30-Days Free Trial; Aims To Capture $5 Bn Video Streaming Market

Netflix, World’s biggest on-demand video streaming, which has just 11 million subscribers in India compared to 300 million of #1 player Hotstar, is now turning aggressive.

In a move which hopefully can trigger more subscribers to join Netflix, they are now offering free access to some content. 

Will this help their cause?

Netflix Offering Free Access To Bard Of Blood

Non-subscribers of Netflix in India can now watch the first episode of Bard Of Blood, their new web series for free.

Bard Of Blood is a spy thriller produced by Shahrukh Khan, and starring Emran Hashmi, based on a book by the same name written by Bilal Siddiqi, and published in 2015.

At present, the first 30 days of full Netflix access is free for all users, however, this is the first time that an episode is being offered for free to all non-subscribers.

In a statement, Netflix said, “At Netflix, we try different ways to bring people closer to great stories. We believe many people will find the thrilling story of spy Kabir Anand very appealing and are excited to make the first episode of the series available to everyone for a limited time. In the future, we will consider if we will do this for other films and series,”

Netflix’ New Strategy For Gaining More Subscribers

Netflix has attempted a similar strategy of offering free content in Mexico and Colombia. For their exclusive Spanish web series ‘Elite’, they had offered similar free episodes for their users in Mexico and Colombia last month.

Exact details are not out, as to how many new subscribers were gained by this experiment.

AltBalaji, the on-demand video streaming service from Balaji Television too has been offering such free content (example free first three episodes) since long, as a strategy to convert non-subscribers.

Since Netflix, and other OTT players like Amazon Prime Video are battling the issue of censorship and content regulation in India, it would be interesting to observe how can they dominate the $5 billion (estimated market size by 2023) on-demand video streaming market in India.