Netflix's India investment created $2 bn in economic impact from 2021-24

Last year, about 3 billion hours of Indian content was available on the platform for the global audience, says Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive officer, Netflix

The US-based subscription video on-demand OTT platform Netflix’s investment in India generated $2 billion in local economic impact from 2021-24, with 20,000 cast and crew jobs created from its productions in the country, said Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive officer, Netflix. 

 

At a panel discussion in the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES), Sarandos said that this is because the company has been committed towards local storytelling.

 

He further added that last year, about 3 billion hours of Indian content was available on the platform for the global audience. 

 

“That is 60 million hours a week. Also, last year, every week there was a title from India on Netflix,” he said. Sarandos also highlighted that many Indian titles had made it to the company’s global top 10 charts in 2024.

 

He added that Indians have a great cinema culture present in the society. 

 

“People love to go to the cinema and to watch movies on TV and also like to talk about cinema. That's been true for many, many decades and that is what makes India so exciting for me too,” he noted.

 

Netflix has been operating in India since nine years and it gained its strong foothold seven years ago through the local production of a series, Sacred Games starring actor Saif Ali Khan. 

 

Since then, the platform has produced around 150 original films and series and filmed across 90 different cities in India.

On the potential of India’s content comparing it to the global presence of K-dramas, Sarandos said, “India is on the cusp of a big inflection point for a storyteller, the way that Squid Game was that kind of moment for (South) Korea.”

 

He thinks that India is about to have a wide global presence like South Korean content as the building blocks have been laid through initiatives like the WAVES. 

 

“Through streaming platforms like Netflix and others, you (Indian content) have a distribution platform to make that possible and the streaming platforms have enabled democratisation of film making in India,” Sarandos added.

 

While on the subject of streaming platforms affecting the growth of the cinema in India post-pandemic, he said that cinema and streaming are coexisting. 

 

“Cinemas are not outdated. Streaming and theaters are not competitors. They can move ahead coexisting with each other as the market before us is huge,” he explained.