Prime Video’s activity in Southeast Asia has so far been lower key than many hoped it might be. By all accounts, that’s about to end. Roll on 2024... 

When Darin Darakananda took to the stage at the ContentAsia Summit in Bangkok this year, she was 100% focused on the pending global premier of Prime Video original, Comedy Island Thailand, at the end of August. As Prime Video’s head of Thai content, she talked about pushing the creative envelope, being brave enough to try new things, and the ‘plus’ factor essential in every pitch. 

A month later, at Media Partners Asia’s (MPA) conference in Bali at the end of September, the streamer’s new-ishly installed Southeast Asia leadership spoke about being more than an SVOD platform, about channels and aggregation, differentiators and partnerships. 

But still, other than Comedy Island adaptations for the Philippines and Indonesia, details are thin if non-existent. Total quiet so far on the Southeast Asia projects announced in another life (circa July 2022), including Sal Kim’s Wattpad-based Three Idiots and A Ghost with Jungka Bangkok in Thailand; scripted series Metal Casket from writer/director Banjong Pisanthanakun, and How to Fake It in Bangkok from Halo Productions with actor Ananda Everingham (The Betrayal) executive producing. 

There has been a lot more activity on the acquisitions front, including the 13 titles announced this month (see page 18). A year ago, Prime Video acquired Korean director Bae Jong’s fantasy action series, Island, for its global platform (ex Korea). Island followed the acquisitions of Korean romantic comedy, Love in Contract. Licensing will continue to be a major part of the offering, says Southeast Asia director David Simonsen, who joined Prime Video in mid-2022 after a long career at HBO Asia. 

So it’s not like nothing has been happening in Southeast Asia. But on the whole, he activity has just been lower-key than many had hoped it would be by now. And the reason is... on Prime Video’s calendar, it’s only been a year. 

Simonsen counts the platform’s wins over the past 12 months, led by establishing the regional team in Singapore. He describes this as “a big win in year one”. With the regional infrastructure that has come online in the last six months, “we’ve touched millions of customers across the region. We’re learning a lot all the time about our engagement strategies and acquisition strategies... we’re happy with that growth,” he said at APOS.

Product infrastructure issues, including payments, which “took us a while”, were in place in Q2 this year and “has made a big impact on the business”. In short, he says, 2023 will go down as a “foundational year”. 

“We’re just getting started,” says Gaurav Gandhi, who shifted to Singapore this year after his April promotion to vice president for the Asia Pacific. He’s bringing with him Prime Video India veteran, Aparna Purohit, as head of originals for Southeast Asia, a role she holds in addition to her India responsibilities. 

Over the past seven and a half years in India, Purohit is credited with building Prime Video India originals from the ground up, including The Family Man, Mirzapur, Farzi, Inside Edge, Made in Heaven, Mumbai Diaries, Rohit Shetty’s action drama Indian Police Force, factual series Dancing on the Grave, Sons of the Soil: Jaipur Pink Panthers, Mind the Malhotras, Four More Shots Please... plus bigger ambitions for original movies.

In India today, Prime Video has a 21% share of the country’s US$1.7 billion premium VOD revenues, level with JioCinema and one point behind the troubled Disney+ Hotstar, according to MPA. 

Industry talk is that others from Gandhi’s India dream team will follow him to Singapore, maybe with dual roles, like Purohit, maybe not. That’s one to watch...

In the meantime, Purohit talks about “creating cultural moments”, characters that become part of the zeitgeist, about creative investment and marketing muscle.

“Developing original content takes time, and requires enormous creative investment, and we don’t shy away from any of that,” she says. The strategy in Southeast Asia is, as it is everywhere, to build “very authentic, rooted stories”, recognising and respecting nuances in each market. 

“We cannot talk about a video streaming business without talking about the quality of the content. That’s the starting point,” Gandhi adds. 

He also talks about aggregated businesses in Japan and India that include channels, TVOD, being the home of anime and sports, moving consumers from basic pay-TV to SVOD, the hunt for gaps into which Amazon can step, creating categories “where we believe there’s an opportunity” such as rentals in India, and – a favourite of his – broadening linguistic palettes.

The strategy will be different in each market. In Japan, for example, Amazon/Prime Video offers about 60 services, with major anime players, sports properties and rights owners, local broadcasters and platforms, including Fuji TV On Demand. 

Gandhi says the Japanese platform offers more than 300,000 titles with 100 plus partners. In India, we have “a more curated strategy” on TVOD designed to build the category. He seems happy with the result. “Almost 90% of the catalogue is rented at least once every month,” he says. 

TVOD channels are on their way to Southeast Asia. “The way we think about this is that we are going to be a great enabler for the category overall for our partners for the region,” he says.

“We always start with what the customer really needs and understanding that requirement and then looking at whitespaces around it,” he says, adding: “We are very clear about building the most loved entertainment service for our customers in each territory”. 

There’s more. “We also are very clear that we are more than just a SVOD service. We are an entertainment hub for our customers”. That means, among other things, bringing channels and TVOD to this part of the world as part of broader industry partnerships. “That’s a big differentiator for us,” Gandhi says.

Simonsen says a focus is “to get more out of what we already have and what we’re producing everywhere”. Questions the team is asking: How do we get more out of what we’re producing in India? In Japan? Simonsen says that “APAC flywheel is really critical for us and we’re seeing some exciting response”. 

When will all of this emerge in Southeast Asia? Purohit promises a robust development slate in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. But still no details or timetable yet. As Simonsen stressed, it’s only been a year. We will, of course, stay tuned. 

▶ Published in ContentAsia October 2023 magazine