Consumers in India used to solely watch movies and TV shows, but over the past few years, they have also developed a taste for web series and mini-series. After the first season of Sacred Games (2018), starring Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, was a hit, the tendency began to pick up, and it intensified during the lockdown. Despite claims that subscriber growth has peaked and that streaming behemoths choose quality over quantity, a lot of money is still put into creating original content. The six major Indian OTT platforms would spend between $600 million and $700 million on producing shows in 2022, according to a report published in The Economic Times last month.
Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar, Sony LIV, Zee5, and Voot are the top six streaming services. The sum listed above does not include investments made in sports material or funds used to produce unique feature films.
A source said, “Interestingly, 2022 is when Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings confessed that the lack of growth in India is frustrating. It’s also common to hear this year that subsequent seasons of popular shows have been cancelled by different OTT giants across the world due to practical factors.” In October, Bollywood Hungama even reported that the streaming platforms have stopped buying films for direct-to-digital release with the same regularity as they used to do in 2020. But at the same time, the platforms don’t want to cut down and want to continue funding shows and movies, as there’s potential. This keeps the hope alive. This was evident by the grand event held by Amazon Prime Video in April 2022 wherein they launched 40 new shows and films in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Even Netflix has made grand announcements and all the plans are on.”
According to a Media Partners Asia estimate cited in the Economic Times article, India would invest $1.3 billion in online video content in 2022, and $4.2 billion is anticipated by 2027.
The number of customers has increased in the meantime in 2022. According to the Ormax OTT Audience Sizing Report 2022, 13.20 crore people in India watch subscription video-on-demand content. In 2021, the amount was 11.50 crores.