The Q4 performance results of various streaming services in India are out.
JustWatch, an international streaming guide catering to over 20 million users per month, has the latest scoop.
It reveals that there has been scant market fluctuation in Q4 2021 compared to Q3, especially among the larger platforms.
Contents
Disney+ Hotstar, and Prime Video held on to the same market share percentage while Netflix increased by 1%.
Meanwhile, the smaller platforms saw more fluctuations, but nothing to write home about.
Voot decreased by 2%, and rivals AltBalaji, SonyLIV and Zee5 all increased by 1%.
Disney+ Hotstar achieved massive growth of 6% from January 2021.
Prime Video has remained stagnant and saw no change in its market share percentage.
Netflix suffered decreases throughout the year, ending 3% lower than when it started.
“Frustrating” Market
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings noted that the company has been making inroads in other major markets.
However, they haven’t been “as successful in India”.
Its Q4 performance was led by the Asia Pacific region, where India and Japan gave it 2.6 million new paying subscribers.
However in India, it ranks number 3 among OTT services.
Disney+ Hotstar is at the top with 46 million subscribers, trailed by Amazon Prime Video with 21.8 million
It hasn’t disclosed subscriber figures for India but it has a current subscriber base of about 5.5 million in the country.
Beaten By Amazon, Disney
This is far lower than Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar, which have around 22 million and 46 million subscribers, respectively.
It looks like Netflix’s target of spending Rs 3,000 crore on content in India has not reaped much rewards.
It also slashed its pricing by nearly 60% to stand a chance against pricing of other platforms, lowering prices to as low as Rs 149 for the mobile plan.
Advantage Of Other Platforms
Disney+ Hotstar, Prime Video and Zee5 have strong regional content repertoire.
This gives them a huge advantage in India where a sizable portion of the population speaks and consumes regional language content.
Zee5 said that almost 50% of its viewership comes from regional content, and Hotstar had over 40% regional viewership back in 2019.
Opportunity And Scope In India
A report from Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) says that India has seen a 4x jump in the number of OTT platforms, a 4x increase in the share of digital in total video watch time, and a 40-50X increase in data consumption (mainly video).
OTT revenue is expected to grow to $13-15 billion over the next decade at a growth rate of 22-25%.
What may work in Netflix’s favour is its unwillingness to back away from the challenge.
It remains “bullish” that India is not “fundamentally different in some way” that the company cannot customise its services to appeal to ”Indian consumers who love entertainment”.
New players entering the market cannot be ruled out, but it doesn’t mean that netflix can’t coexist and thrive alongside them.
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