Netflix has renewed Locomotive Global’s Hindi version of U.S. drama series “Ray Donovan”, returning real-life relatives Rana Daggubati and Venkatesh Daggubati in the lead roles as Rana and Naga Naidu.

The season two renewal coincided with Netflix’s Q1 2023 earnings call, during which CFO Spence Neumann said the 20%-60% drop in subscription prices in India in December 2021 had resulted in paid net adds growing by about 30%.

Neumann also said FX-neutral revenue growth accelerated from 19% to 24% year-on-year as a result of the price adjustment.

During the call, co-CEO Ted Sarandos called India “a big prize” and highlighted “lots of promise to continue to grow in India”.

“As the content opportunity continues to scale and our ability to access the market and those audiences continues to grow, we can do quite well in India. We are long ways from that, we are still investing against it and I think that we will ultimately do great in India,” Sarados added.

Today’s announcement of the “Rana Naidu” renewal comes less than two months after the show’s 10 March global premier, and follows two appearances on Netflix’s top 10 global non-English TV lists – #10 for the week of 6-12 March and #4 for 13-19 March for global viewing of 24.48 million hours for the two weeks.

In India, “Rana Naidu” was #1 for three weeks (6-26 March) and has retained a place on the local top 10.

The return of “Rana Naidu” puts India in the lead as Asia’s top formats market for this year so far, according to ContentAsia’s ongoing Formats Outlook tracker.

India now has six of Asia’s 19 titles this year so far (either newly announced/aired or scheduled to premiere across the region this year).

For full year 2022, the country ranked third by volume, accounting for 27 of the 199 titles/seasons commissioned/on air for the year in 18 countries.

By genre, India continues to be dominated by scripted adaptations.

Of the 27 titles in 2022, 13 were drama series, with a marked preference for thrillers and crime stories.

These included "Gaalivaana" (the Indian adaptation of BBC Studios’ thriller, "One Of Us") and "Duranga – Two Shades of a Lie", adapted from Korea’s "Flower of Evil".

India, which has been in Asia’s top three formats markets for the last five years, has an average of 34 formats a year on air/commissioned, and spent much of this time ranked third behind Thailand and Vietnam, according to ContentAsia’s Formats Outlook 2018-2022 reports.

“Rana Naidu” is produced by Sunder Aaron and the U.S./India-baed Locomotive Global, owned by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.

The Indian version is created by Karan Anshuman and co-directed by Karan Anshuman and Suparn S. Varma.