Slash, hike, put up paywall: What Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, JioCinema have been up to with their pricing in India

Leading video OTT players are toying with different pricing strategies after 6-7 years of the streaming boom in an entertainment-hungry but price-sensitive India, where the recent past has seen Netflix slash prices, Amazon Prime Video hike prices and JioCinema introduce a premium tier.  

At 4.9 hours per day, Indians came eighth in the world for the most amount of time spent on phone apps in 2022, a 32 per cent growth since 2019, according to the latest FICCI-EY report. But consultancy firm Ormax Media pegs that India has 424 million OTT users, of which only 49 million are paying subscribers or SVOD audiences. Besides, each paying audience member has an average of 2.4 OTT subscriptions. 

“India is world’s largest entertainment content consumption market where ARPU of Cable or DTH is Rs 150-180 per month and each OTT player wants a slice of this universe. Since OTT players have diverse vision, hence their price points will continue to remain wide, driven by a combination of targeted audience cohorts and content bouquet,” said Rajeev Dhal, Chief Operating Officer at AdOnMo and former Chief Revenue Officer at Zee5.

In December 2021, Netflix, which was positioned as a premium streaming player in India, slashed prices in India by 20-60 per cent across its plans amid stiff competition from other streaming platforms. Its cheapest plan is now available for Rs 149 a month.  

Rival Amazon Prime Video informed its customers last month that its monthly plan will now be priced at Rs 299 instead of Rs 179 earlier and the quarterly plan will be priced at Rs 599 as compared to Rs 459 earlier, within just two years of hiking its Prime membership prices in India. 

Meanwhile, Reliance-backed JioCinema which shot into prominence after offering free cricket IPL streaming, has introduced a subscription-based tier ‘JioCinema Premium’ for Rs 999 annually which provides access to exclusive HBO content on the platform. Jio Studios has also announced a slate of 100 pieces of original shows and movies, which are likely to go behind the paywall. 

“Netflix wants the top 1 per cent slice of the market through premium-priced plans, while Amazon Prime Video is segmenting the market by upping their AVOD play through ad-funded pricing tier, proposed acquisition of MX Player and the launch of comprehensive ad-tech stack. Jio is driving disruption by offering super premium content free of cost to expand the reach of AVOD business and go behind top 1% of the market that’s price inelastic and currently dominated by Netflix,” adds Dhal.  

He says price points across OTT platforms will remain lesser than DTH/Cable ARPUs, while platforms with ad-funded models (AVOD) will try to further subsidise their pricing. 

Watch: Vice Media among 7 companies file for bankruptcy in 2 days; Is the US facing a credit crunch?