In the past month, India’s Amazon MX Player showcased 100 titles on its 2025 slate. Netflix added 26 Indian originals, including Vikramaditya Motwane’s grim and gripping, "Black Warrant". The newly branded JioHotstar, launched on 14 Feb with a powerful sports play, big-ticket international brands, a slate of Korean dramas, originals such as "Oops Ab Kya?" (an adaptation of "Jane The Virgin"), and a commitment to making premium entertainment accessible to all. Meanwhile, SonyLIV, better known for cerebral shows such as "Rocket Boys" and "Freedom at Midnight", is pushing adaptations of global unscripted formats ("Shark Tank", "Million Dollar Listing"). 

Genres in this latest streaming entertainment environment range wide, across scripted and unscripted, from the life and mysterious death of paranormal explorer Gaurav Tiwari, in "Bhay" ("Fear") to free miniTV show "Who’s your Gynac" on Amazon MX Player to Netflix’s Emmy award-winning "Delhi Crime", which returns in 2025 for a third season along with second seasons of "Kohrra" and "Rana Naidu" ("Ray Donovan"). Plus there’s the new slew of Turkish and Korean dramas dubbed in multiple Indian languages. 

In this smorgasbord of tastes, cultures, regions, languages and genres, streaming platforms’ determination to expand their reach is clear. 

After 24 months of consolidation and cost-cutting, the chosen vehicles to this new goal look and feel like well-written and well-cast TV shows – a step up from free-TV broadcast soap culture but a dial back from the high-end premium limited series that traditionally define subscription streaming services. 

Everything about India’s 2025 line-ups speaks to this new battle between the big four SVOD players – JioHotstar, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and SonyLIV.

The top end of the market is already spoken for with 125 million subscribers (source: MPA) and reach of about 375 million viewers in 2024. To make money, streamers needs to expand reach, pushing into a free and ad-supported, curated or user-generated content landscape dominated by YouTube, Meta and India’s state-owned, DD Freedish.

India has 650 million smartphone users and a traditional TV audience of 900 million. 50 million homes have Connected TVs, increasing potential reach in existing member homes. 

Much of this explains the mass-market, family-friendly programming and release choices streaming platforms are making. In a significant change, producers are also being asked to come up with 100-episode shows instead of seven- or 10-episode series.

A year after it acquired MX Player, Amazon’s Mini TV/MX Player blend remains emphatically free and claims to reach 250 million unique visitors a month. “On texture of content we have gone even wider. That is not just because of the acquisition (of MX Player) but also because of the landscape,” says Karan Bedi, director and head, Amazon MX Player. 

Netflix is taking a bigger bet on non-fiction, with shows like "The Greatest Rivalry – India vs Pakistan", which one might see on the still-popular linear free-TV channels. The series premiered on 7 Feb to a #1 spot on Netflix India’s top 10, and held its lead for the following week. From April, "The Greatest Rivalry – India vs Pakistan" joins live streaming of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). India is a major WWE market, attracting more than 50 million viewers to RAW alone.

Netflix also has blockbuster local talk show, "The Great Indian Kapil Show" with comedian Kapil Sharma. The series returns for a third season this year. Sharma started building his TV brand with Sony in 2016. He boarded Netflix in 2024 as part of the bid to broaden the audience base.

But even if it looks like streaming in India is adopting a traditional TV character, SVOD’s offering remains compelling and some differences are clear. 

As Monika Shergill, Netflix India’s VP content, says: “You can’t programme for TV the way we do for streaming, which can offer many things to many people”. – By Vanita Kohli-Khandekar

▶ Published in ContentAsia's 24 February 2025 eNewsletter