FORTUNE INDIA’S luxury issue a year ago had a feature on ‘quiet luxury’. Whoever we spoke to from the luxury space while researching for this story told us to watch the ‘Netflix show’ Succession, which epitomises quiet luxury. But we couldn’t find it on Netflix. That’s because Succession is an HBO original!

The fact that the who’s who of India’s luxury industry inadvertently pointed towards Netflix — despite Succession being an HBO original — made it apparent that the U.S. streaming platform had become the default entertainment destination for the upper classes in India. Be it House of Cards, Bridgerton, or Sacred Games, Netflix has indeed been offering quality original content to Indian audiences. In fact, co-founder Reed Hastings, on several occasions, had talked about his dream to become the next HBO without the hassle of a cable subscription. Life is serendipitous — if the $72-billion Netflix-Warner Bros. Discovery deal fructifies, HBO would become a part of Netflix’s portfolio.

While the entertainment industry awaits with bated breath to see who would finally acquire Warner Bros. (the board of Warner Bros. unanimously turned down Paramount Skydance’s bid of $108.4 billion in January 2026), in India, Netflix’s strategy has remained constant in the past decade: profitably acquire subscribers.

India’s OTT market, says PwC’s latest Global Entertainment and Media Outlook Report, had revenues of $2.3 billion in 2024; the number is projected to touch $3.5 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 8.8%. SVOD — subscription video on demand, where users pay a recurring fee for unlimited access to a large video library — is expected to remain dominant, accounting for 68.8% of total OTT revenue by 2029, while AVOD — advertising-based video on demand, where users get free access to video content in exchange for watching ads — will grow from $683 million in 2024 to $960 million in 2029 at a 7.0% CAGR, making up 27.6%.

According to industry sources, Netflix has around 16-20 million subscribers (300 million globally). And it has revenues of ₹3,842 crore ($39 billion global revenue), according to Tracxn. While competitor JioStar (which owns JioHotstar) is believed to be making losses, Netflix India’s profit surged 63% to ₹85 crore in FY25. India has been the highest growth market worldwide for Netflix after the U.S., and it is also the only profitable streaming platform in India. An Indian series or film (such as Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar or Laapataa Ladies) was in Netflix’s Global Top 10 every week in 2024. In 2023, shows such as Delhi Crime season two and comedian Vir Das’s Landing were nominated for International Emmys and Landing also won.

Balancing premium content and mass subscribers

SO, WHAT HAS Netflix, which began life in the U.S. as a DVD-by-mail rental service, done differently? In an advertising-dominated market it chose to remain a subscription-based service from day one and that probably has been the secret sauce of its success. The focus has always been to get returns and not mindlessly expand its subscriber base. When it came to India on January 6, 2016, at a price point of ₹800 per month, it was clearly meant for the rich. However, the 400-odd million (now over 650 million) internet users in India were impossible to ignore. But the streaming platform was firm that it will not offer its service free or at a discounted price. After all, it is positioned as a premium service globally.

It instead chose to launch a ₹149 mobile plan in 2019. In 2021, it also slashed its basic tier pricing by 60% to ₹199. Its standard and premium plans were recalibrated to ₹499 and ₹649 a month. But it never gave away its service free or at ₹99 a month like many of its competitors.

Despite the reduction in prices, Netflix continues to be more expensive than rival JioHotstar whose premium plan (with ad-supported live content) costs ₹299 a month. In the early years, Hastings often mentioned in the company’s earnings call that its next 100 million subscribers would come from India, a statement that was edited out. For, it realised that the next 100 million for Netflix can’t come from India since it is too expensive, with an annual subscription of ₹6,000-8,000.

“We have expanded our pricing and product options to make Netflix accessible to more people, without moving away from being premium,” says Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos. In fact, Monika Shergill, vice president, content, Netflix India, calls the Indian arm of the global streaming platform aspirational, not premium.

“We make premium soaps and movies and the biggest cinemas stream on our platform (such as RRR and more recently Dhurandhar). We will remain the home of the big and the bold, we are also the home of relatables such as The Great Indian Kapil Show, Single Papa, and The Ba***ds of Bollywood. We are programming for the broadest audiences,” she says.

“To grow and succeed in most categories in India, appealing to a wide cross-section of consumers is critical. Netflix has strongly consolidated its position with the premium segment and is increasingly becoming very relevant to the mass audience base as well,” says Vikram Malhotra, founder and CEO, Abundantia Entertainment.

Adds Akshaye Widhani, CEO, Yash Raj Films, which streams its library on the platform, “In India, Netflix has grown from an ambitious idea... into a cultural conversation powered by bold local narratives, distinctive creative voices, and millions of viewers who proved that storytelling has no boundaries.”

Shergill calls Netflix India’s programming strategy a thali that has diverse content that appeals to all kinds of audiences. But that doesn’t mean it has compromised with quality. “Your rate of quality improvement depends on how many swings you can take. So, we’re doing more quantity, and that’s helping with the quality,” Hastings had told Fortune India in 2021.

The focus on quality comes through in how Netflix produces its shows. At a time when most streaming platforms in India are talking about the TV-plus model (where the per episode cost of content creation may not be as low as conventional TV, but it is significantly lower than the per episode costs of a show on OTT, which often runs into ₹4-5 crore per episode), Netflix is clear that it will never compromise on investments. “We stand for quality and volume. Bringing the content to the consumer fast is equally important. In running fast, doing quality projects and doing it at a certain scale and velocity, we have to spend more,” says Shergill. The first season of Sacred Games is known to have been made with a budget of ₹40 crore, while the second season cost around ₹100 crore. “For us that benchmark is as true today as it was when we started. We have not left that big cinematic benchmark that Sacred Games or Delhi Crime established. We have added more relatable wide audience programming, casual entertainment.”

Netflix’s strategy of being bold and expensive is debatable, but it has worked for them even from a profitability standpoint. Its focus on cinematic excellence has changed the content game in India, says Sameer Nair, MD, Applause Entertainment. “With Sacred Games, Netflix became the absolute gold standard for content in India. At that time, scripted TV was still in the time warp of saas-bahu shows. Netflix made TV the poor second cousin. Today, even though streaming doesn’t make enough money yet, they are still the cool people to hang out with, and one has to give credit to Netflix for that.”

Shyamala Venkatachalam, former legal head of Zee Entertainment and a senior media professional, says Netflix has been a strategic performer in India. “It began with focussing on direct-to-consumer subscriptions and then it did telco partnerships that made it more accessible to consumers. Its distribution strategy has been strategic and flexible. It took time and didn’t surrender to the market needs immediately,” she says. Bundling with telcos gave the streaming platform the reach it desired, without tampering too much with its subscription tiers.

Taking the first steps in India

EVEN BEFORE NETFLIX stepped into India in 2016, the Indian entertainment industry was trying to partner with the streaming giant, which by 2015 was a force to reckon with in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. These regions had a significant diaspora population wanting to consume Indian content and signing up with Netflix seemed a great way of serving those audiences. It would have also saved them from cumbersome and expensive distribution deals with multiple global distributors.

The first time Venky Mysore, CEO of Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, met the Netflix team in Los Angeles was in 2015 to strike a deal for the SRK film Raees. Though Raees didn’t make it to the platform then, Red Chillies eventually did sign its first 100-film library deal with Netflix. “At that time, it was evaluating India and our view was to sensitise it to the Indian market and why it was important for Netflix to take the lead. It led us to doing our first library deal with it,” says Mysore.

While Mysore connected with Netflix to distribute content, Afsar Zaidi, founder of talent management company Exceed Entertainment, tried to get some of the celebrity actors (such as Saif Ali Khan and Hrithik Roshan) he was managing to find roles in Netflix shows. Zaidi frequently engaged with the content team at LA before they launched in India. And after they launched, Zaidi often found himself at the LA office to strike a deal for Saif in Sacred Games. “We confirmed Sacred Games in New York at IIFA in 2016. The negotiation was done keeping in parity with feature film negotiations that we usually do,” says Zaidi.

When Netflix’s maiden Indian original Sacred Games season 1 released in 2018, it was the first time audiences got to sample a cinematic show and that created a lot of excitement in the industry. It dropped all eight episodes together and consumers discovered binge-watching. By 2019, the streaming platform had launched Delhi Crime season 1 and films such as Chopsticks and Love Per Square Foot.

Though there was a team in place in India, all the creative decisions were being taken out of LA. However, in 2016, Netflix hired Indian-origin U.S. content expert Bela Bajaria from Universal as its head of global television. Bajaria was given charge of markets outside of the U.S. and Canada until she was elevated as chief content officer in 2023. Her mandate was to entertain with content from across the globe which meant setting up local teams and working with local content creators.

“It’s very important that you have creators and amazing stories from around the world and you allow them this space to tell a very specific, local, authentic story. If you’re sitting in Mumbai, Madrid or Mexico City, you can click on Netflix and you can find your local show and you can scroll over. You watch Money Heist, Amar Singh Chamkila or Stranger Things,” Bajaria tells Fortune India, sitting in the Netflix India office in Mumbai, sipping a cup of hot masala chai.

“And if our ambition is to entertain the world, you definitely cannot entertain the world without having incredible local stories from India and in multiple Indian languages,” she adds. Bajaria, who has a budget of $18 billion, wants to create Indian content that is as diverse as the variants of masala chai available in this country.

When Bajaria hired Shergill as head of content in 2019, her mandate was straightforward — create a winning strategy for India. “After Bela came, Netflix’s strategy changed to saying, ‘We are not going to just aspire for nose-in-the-air cinematic show excellence, but we are going to make highly sticky, watchable mass programming.’ It still makes Adolescence, but it does a lot more of Harlan Coben and lot more spicy stuff. It is using a lot more data to create content,” says an industry veteran who declined to be named.

An important element of Shergill’s winning strategy for India was to create a local pool of content creators. “Since in the first couple of years programming was happening out of the U.S., there were only a few names that those teams knew, and they were leaning towards those producers at that time,” she says.

There were gaps in the programming strategy, too. “We were not programming for the South; we used to have original series and films but no non-fiction. We didn’t have licensed play; we were buying small prestige award-winning titles, and the service was designed for the set of audiences who knew about the Netflix global service and who watched a lot of international content.”

The initial leaning towards programming darker, grittier content, led to an image that Netflix is edgy, dark, and gritty, only meant for a certain kind of storytelling and a certain kind of audience. But streaming allows to programme for the last-mile person and for every unique taste cluster that might exist. The interests of a young man in a place like Varanasi who watches The Ba***ds of Bollywood, would be different from a college girl in a metro who would anxiously wait for the latest season of Emily in Paris.

“We did Masaba Masaba, [and] Little Things — which we have taken from YouTube after the first season. That informed people we are actually interested in lighter stories, too. We got Kota Factory after the first season and that’s one of our most successful franchises. We also commissioned Mismatched,” Shergill adds.

Her efforts to create more stories out of India that would resonate with both Indian and global audiences required her to think strategically and pragmatically through an audience-first lens. “It was about getting filmmakers to understand the rigour and timelines of TV and also tell stories in an immersive, long-format way.”

Indian TV had never done premium storytelling, which is writing deeply insightful stories in limited episodes. Writing film stories was about writing for a two-hour format, where character exploration isn’t that deep. Shergill conducted writers’ rooms for creators, which she says a lot of them initially opposed. “We shared the Netflix bible openly. There is a core belief in every market we work that we are here to partner with the creative ecosystem, we are here to enable everyone to actually know what these best practices are.”

These interventions have definitely paid off — Netflix India stole the show in 2024 with blockbuster content like Heeramandi, Amar Singh Chamkila, The Great Indian Kapil Show and IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack. In the second quarter of 2024, the U.S. streaming giant’s Indian arm was the second-biggest driver of new paying customers for Netflix, and was ranked third in terms of revenue growth.

Heeramandi was on the Top 10 weekly chart in over 70 countries for months. The show is known to have garnered over 15 million views, while Amar Singh Chamkila got over 8.3 million views. “We dubbed Heeramandi in 13 languages, which was a first for us,” says Shergill. “To see the series travel to so many parts of the world... has been overwhelming. The show became far bigger than I had imagined,” says Sanjay Leela Bhansali (SLB), the show’s producer.

In 2025, the third season of Delhi Crime outdid the first two seasons and Netflix India announced yet another ambitious project, Operation Safed Sagar, which chronicles the role of the Indian Air Force in the Kargil War.

But Netflix India is often accused of being high-handed and not allowing newer talent to shine. “I challenge anybody who says that Netflix India doesn’t give a chance to new creators,” Shergill reacts. She rattles off more than a dozen names of well-known creators and actors who have debuted on Netflix. “We know if we don’t have new voices we are not going to be able to delight or surprise our audiences. Do you think I can hold SLB’s hands and tell him what to do, or can I come in the way of Aryan Khan’s (director of The Ba***ds of Bollywood) vision? We can only help them in technical aspects or help them reach wider audiences.”

Investing in expansive content

IN 2022, IT was reported that Netflix had lost 2 million subscribers and its stock tumbled by 20%. This was the time when the streaming platform said that it would roll out its advertising tier. For a service that from inception had said it would never bow down to advertisers, this seemed to be a desperate move to acquire customers at any cost. But in hindsight, it comes across as a well thought out strategy.

Bajaria says the subscriber loss was not due to customers not wanting to watch Netflix. “The market was down, there was the Russia-Ukraine war, and we pulled out of Russia, which was the subscriber loss we were talking about,” she explains. “The important thing that we talked about during that time was don’t listen to the noise. Because at the end of the day, we have to stay focussed on what we know best to do — bet on creators, take big swings, and not act out of fear. We said we have to continue to be fearless in storytelling.”

The streaming platform has rolled out its ad tier in 12 markets, all of them matured economies where they would get a better bang for the buck. The strategy has paid off. Its ad revenue is forecast to double to almost $3.1 billion in 2025 from $1.4 billion in 2024. Netflix doesn’t plan to roll out advertising anytime soon in India, a market that has always been AVOD and where most streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, have launched their ad tier. Venkatachalam, the former legal head at Zee, considers it a smart move, as the revenue from digital advertising in India is negligible. “TV may be plateauing, but it is still the cash cow for all broadcast networks.”

“Not rolling out the ad tier across the globe was more about, let’s get this right, let’s build it and do it really well in these markets, and let’s learn from it. After that we will expand in different countries,” Bajaria explains.

She claims that despite all the disruptions over the years, her content budget has always become bigger. Out of the $18-billion content chest, Netflix is known to have invested around $2 billion in India. “The focus was always to continue to invest and not pull back,” she says. “Even in India, I was like, you know what, Tamil and Telugu are great markets, they have amazing movies and TV shows. We know people love those, so let’s continue to expand,” Bajaria adds. In fact, Netflix India’s South programming is far higher than competitors Amazon Prime Video and JioHotstar.

Bajaria’s invest and expand programming strategy has also led to investment in live sports. From NFL to WWE and boxing, Netflix, says Bajaria, is constantly evaluating newer sports investments. “Sports... sometimes is the best soap opera. There is so much emotion attached to sports.”

Any plan to bid for the Indian Premier League rights when it comes up for renewal in 2027? “Do you know how expensive it is,” Bajaria laughs. On a more serious note, she says, “When people want to take a big part of their budget and spend it on sports, that’s great. That is just not our strategy.”

Bajaria says there is still so much of storytelling to be done in India. “We are barely scratching the surface of even doing the different languages from the South. There is still so much room to continue to grow.” Her India strategy is to win in many Indias by creating more and more local stories that would appeal to not just the Indian audiences but also the global audiences, just as the way Squid Game or Money Heist have become worldwide favourites.

Netflix India is at an envious position in terms of growth and profitability. Industry experts attribute its success to its single-minded focus on creating the best content. “JioStar has been a broadcast network from which it has moved to streaming. Its content investment is for both TV and digital. TV has plateaued but it still continues to be a cash cow for the network, its ad revenue on digital is also inconsequential,” explains Venkatachalam.

She says that JioHotstar is more catch-up television and doesn’t have as many originals as its peers. “It also has the challenge of managing its sports rights. In terms of competitive landscape, Netflix is very well placed, it has much more opportunities to tap. Its average revenue per user is much higher because it has value customers,” Venkatachalam adds.

Netflix, says a senior industry leader, is a media company that has no other distraction other than creating great content and building more franchises. “Amazon Prime Video is a rounding off error in the Amazon empire. JioHotstar is a rounding off error in the giant Reliance empire,” the industry leader points out.

So, when everything is going its way, what should Netflix be worried about? “With great power comes great responsibility,” says Nair of Applause. He says it with reference to the Warner deal, which would make Netflix a powerhouse if it goes through. “It will have the power to influence the future of theatres and studio businesses. If it can get the right balance, there is nothing that can stop it.”

For Sarandos, the goal remains unchanged — stay focussed and continuously improve the Netflix experience. “We’ve had to continually innovate and evolve our user experience, recommendations, plans and pricing, payments infrastructure, and distribution partnerships across the globe. So, while our strategy of focus and continuous improvement is simple, the execution is not easy. We embrace change and relish and thrive on competition as it pushes us to improve our service even faster for our members.”

Tech firms turn content powerhouses

Rupert Murdoch, in a conversation with a leading Indian media CEO in the early 2000s, had said that though he owned the most valuable studio media assets — 21st Century Fox and NewsCorp — he wasn’t sure if he would be able to retain the supremacy two decades later. That sounds prophetic: two decades later, Fox is a part of the Walt Disney ecosystem and Murdoch has stepped down as chairman of NewsCorp, tech firms such as Netflix, Meta, Amazon, and Google are calling the shots, and turning content powerhouses.

If the $72-billion Netflix-Warner Bros. Discovery deal goes through, Netflix would become the world’s biggest content firm, beating the likes of The Walt Disney Company and Paramount. And the industry seems to be looking forward to it. “I look at this development as super-positive as it builds a forward-looking momentum for the combined entity and brings together strong and deep capabilities across diverse points in the content value chain,” says Vikram Malhotra, founder and CEO, Abundantia Entertainment.

“A tech company that relies on acquiring content, now with this capability added will redefine how content will be conceived, developed, and distributed,” adds Venky Mysore, CEO, Red Chillies Entertainment.

The deal, however, has sparked fear that it could come at the expense of the theatrical business. The fear stems from repeated statements of Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos that theatres are dead. Of course, he has made it clear that the deal will not impact theatricals. In fact, can Netflix afford not to release films in theatres? If Netflix were to produce a blockbuster like Dhurandhar and release it only on its platform, raking in ₹1,000 crore revenue would be a far cry. “Will Netflix pay ₹1,000 crore-plus for streaming rights? Probably not. You have to have a selfish commercial and financial interest in keeping theatres alive and keeping that habit alive,” points out a senior media professional.

But why would it be averse to releasing films in theatres, wonders Monika Shergill, vice president, content, Netflix India. “If as a company we are expanding through M&A and we are leaning into acquiring a company where theatricals are big, why would anybody change that equation. That’s misplaced and unnecessary anxiety,” she says, adding that the merger would strengthen the creative ecosystem.

—Ajita Shashidhar