Amazon India Team Talk Free & Paid Streaming Strategy

Gaurav Gandhi, Nikhil Madhok and Amogh Dusad showcased Amazon’s strategy for India across Prime Video and the free Amazon MX Player at APOS in Bali, including its plans for micro-dramas on a new platform, MX Fatafat.

Gandhi, VP for the Asia Pacific and MENA at Prime Video in India; Madhok, director and head of originals at Prime Video India; and Dusad, director and head of content for Amazon MX Player, took part in a fireside chat with Media Partners Asia’s Vivek Couto at the event in Bali this week.

Prime Video India is delivering a slate of licensed content, original series and movies as well as Amazon MGM Studios’ theatrical-first movies to its subscribers. At the free Amazon MX Player player, meanwhile, more than 250 million monthly users can access a slate of premium quality content for mobile-first customers. MX Fatafat will serve as a new hub for micro-dramas.

“India is a really heterogeneous and diverse country with customers having very different needs,” Gandhi said on the rationale for having two services in the market. “Both the services address two different sets of customers—Prime Video caters to customers who are subscription-ready, who have actually transitioned to streaming as their first choice or the only choice of entertainment. While Amazon MX Player is aimed at customers who are now transitioning from traditional media—TV or are still on it, but are not subscription-ready yet, though they are seeking high-quality premium content.”

Madhok weighed in on his strategy for Prime Video India, which this week announced development on a second season of the local version of The Traitors. “We were very clear from the start that the local content in India had to be highly differentiated from television, but at the same time, when it lands up on the service, sitting next to our international content, it must be equally compelling, if not more,” he said. “As such, we’ve been very clear about bringing premium, nuanced, segmented and highly differentiated cinematic quality originals. So, the investments that we’re making in the production quality for these originals is way higher than linear television, and closer to cinema. And that’s why we’ve been able to create franchises like Made in Heaven, The Family Man, Paatal Lok, Call Me Bae, among others, which have become bigger with every season.”

Addressing his remit at Amazon MX Player, Dusad commented, “It is a fairly heterogeneous market socio-culturally, and we draw the themes for our content from customer learnings. For example, themes of inspiration and aspiration resonate with customers because these are people who really want to go up the socio-economic ladder, and rags-to-riches stories or content about an underdog’s journey strike a chord with their lives. Similarly, we have a franchise called Hustler, which actually delves into the start-up hustle culture, and that resonates a lot with young customers. Content that can help customers escape the day-to-day life and mundanity of everyday routine works well too, whether it’s from any form of a large show like Aashram, which has had more than 200 million streamers in the country, or through the international dubbed content that we are localizing, which gives viewers a window into a different world, and effectively serves that need of escapism that they seek.”

MX Fatafat will deliver serialized stories, between one and two minutes per episode, with 80 to 100 episodes per series, in vertical format. “MX Fatafat is a fresh approach, requiring unique writing and production methods, and we are looking forward to launch it later this year,” Dusad said.

“Supporting the creative economy in India is very intentional on our part across Prime Video and Amazon MX Player—whether it was about building cinematic long-form storytelling in India, which didn’t actually exist, to actually bringing learnings from around the world to better equip our partners, to even thinking about how we can get new creators and technicians on shows—over 50 percent of Prime Video’s originals in development and production feature new talent either in front of or behind the camera,” Gandhi said. “One of our big successes this year, Dupahiya, came from absolutely new, first-time creators, so the intentionality is really important.”