Amazon $AMZN’s focus on original Indian content seems to be doing wonders for the e-commerce giant, not just locally but even in the US.
In India, original Hindi-language series like Mirzapur, Comicstaan, and Breathe were binged the most by users of the company’s video-streaming platform, Amazon Prime Video, according to a company release.
Its first Hindi Prime Original show Inside Edge, based on a fictitious T20 cricket team, became the first Indian show from the video-streaming industry to be nominated for the 2018 International Emmy Awards.
Over the last couple of years, American video-streaming platforms like Prime Video and Netflix $NFLX have gone all out to produce original content in India. While this content goes a long way in helping them attract eyeballs in India, they also find a huge global audience. For instance, two out of three viewers for Netflix’s Hindi original series Sacred Games were from outside India.
“Netflix and Amazon have to invest a lot in content acquisition to appeal to the Indian audience,” Karan Sabharwal, an independent researcher, told Quartz. “Amazon Prime Video contains wide options for regional movies and shows on its sites such as the latest Hindi movies. Netflix, on the other hand, serves to the Indian independent filmmakers which may not become great box-office hits but definitely caters to a certain kind of audience.”
But despite all this investment in original content, Amazon Prime Video garnered just a 5% share of the Indian over-the-top market in the first quarter of 2018, while Netflix held only 1.4%. Hotstar was the leading video-streaming app with a 70% share, followed by SonyLiv at 13%.
Besides video-streaming, Amazon’s Prime subscription extends to a whole lot of other services such as free two-day shipping for orders from e-commerce platform Amazon.in and audio content through Amazon Music.
Here are some other India-specific trends from the services that come bundled with an Amazon Prime subscription in India:
