With Netflix’s latest experimental plan of providing their subscription for a lower price & with more benefits to attract more users
Netflix is ready to “experiment” with a lower pricing plan than its current basic plan. The company’s CPO Greg Peters stated this during Tuesday’s earnings call while answering a question on how Netflix will increase subscriber growth in India.
The streaming service will also spread beyond English into Hindi and other Indic and Dravidian languages, CEO Reed Hastings added, in order to meet its long-term goal of 100 million subscribers in India.
HIGHLIGHTS
- The new tier would sit below the current basic plan
- Netflix will also expand beyond Hindi for content
- Taking it “1 million at a time”, Hastings said
Well, Netflix is a costly streaming service, let’s see how it plans out its Strategy
Currently, Netflix is the costliest streaming service in India, starting at ₹500 per month for a single screen and ₹650 per month for HD quality.
Hey, fellow wish-we-could-afford-netflix-ers! @NetflixIndia subscription may soon become more affordable. https://t.co/4S5QBXPc8x
— Tech2 (@tech2eets) October 18, 2018
Its biggest international competitor, Amazon, has taken a much different route, pricing its Prime subscription at ₹129 per month or ₹999 per year.
While Netflix’s pricing strategy comes close to its rate in the US — ₹500 is about $6.80, close to starting point of $8 in the US — Amazon Prime’s ₹999 is about $13.60, a big gap from $119 in the US.
Possible Chances to provide the same level of Content in the region based on their local language
“We’ll experiment with other pricing models, not only for India but around the world that allows us to sort of broaden access by providing a pricing tier that sits below our current lowest tier,” Peters said in response to a question about pricing. “And we’ll see how that does in terms of being able to accelerate our growth and get more access. But even on the existing model, we feel like we have a long runway ahead of us in India.”
In addition to pricing options, Hastings added, Netflix will look at expanding its local language options in India — he didn’t say if he meant content or user interface, though context points to the former – and “more bundling” to grow itself.
India has the potential market for Netflix to Grow & Expand
He noted that 300 million Indians carry mobile phones, which are all potential customers for the streaming service. “Now, we’ll take 1 million at a time and figure out how to expand the market as we grow,” he added.
“We’re super encouraged with India and the growth that we’ve got early on, but we know it’s going to be somewhat of a tough market,” Netflix’s chief financial officer David Wells said. “So there’s — that notion is along — is a million at a time, right. It’s not going to be overnight where we’re going to get to those higher numbers.”
Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, said that its Indian originals — the likes of Sacred Games, Ghoul, and Love Per Square Foot — helped make Netflix “feel more local, more relevant” in the country.
“What they had was a product that people understood more, talked to their friends more about that was written about more in the press and certainly talked about more by influencers, and then delivered with content that isn’t otherwise available in the market series being produced at the quality [of Sacred Games],” Sarandos added.