“We are working with content creators in India to add more Bollywood titles, and also Indie local films. We are working on expanding licensing rights in India to add more variety of content, across languages,” Chitavan Pandya Patel, director content acquisition for Netflix, told IndianExpress.com and other select members of the Indian media.
Unlike regular Indian TV, Netflix is not yet censoring its content. “Of course, we don’t wish to flout any local laws. But we plan to take on this on case by case basis. For now all the content is uncensored on Netflix. We also do have a rating system for our content and that’s clearly visible when you’re watching a movie or show. So we will warn a user if a content has strong language, violence etc,” said Chris Jaffe Product Lead for Netflix. This rating system has been developed in-house by the company based on global ratings.
So far Netflix’s content has not been reviewed by the Censor Board and the company says it will watch and learn how reaction to its service pans out in India.
While the payment options are now limited to credit cards and PayPal, Jaffe said they could add more options in the coming months.
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Netflix won’t be tying up with an ISP either in India for now and it hasn’t made any special tweaks to its service to account for the poor streaming speeds in India. Jaffe said a YouTube-like offline mode was “highly unlikely”.
On whether Netflix could eventually overshadow and outlast cable TV in India, the company’s director of content acquisition said that it was more about increasing access to content. “There are instances where Netflix and cable are coexisting. It’s not always about one or the other. We think there’s room to grow for everybody,” Pandaya said. Like the rest of the world, Netflix will continue to remain advertising free.
Netflix has continued with its global pricing strategy rather than offer a price cut for India, as is the norm. The company says that initially it plans to targets those with broadband connections in India.
