Netflix Inc in last week shared its strategy of rolling out a lower-priced mobile-only plan for the users in India. The streaming company will be offering the plan within the next three month to excel into the market which is price-sensitive while company has been struggling in its home ground as it has lost customers in the last quarter in the United States.
For Netflix, India is the among last markets where it has bigger growth opportunities, but the competition is also tougher in that market with the presence of Amazon.com Inc’s Prime Video and Hotstar, a video streaming platform to which Walt Disney’s India unit is the owner.
For the first time in eight years, in its quarterly results posted in last week, Netflix came losing streaming customers in the United States and also failed to meet the new subscriber targets overseas.
India being a mobile-first nation with many of the users coming to experience the internet for the first time on their phones, a mobile-only package is a sensible strategy to target new users, said Tarun Pathak, analyst at Counterpoint Research.
A 250-rupee ($3.63) monthly subscription plan for mobile devices was under test in India, where data plans are one of the cheapest in the world, as said the Netflix in March.
Company’s statistics in India are more prominent in the global expansion plans of Executive Officer Reed Hastings.
About the plan, that is set to be launched in the third quarter, the company in a letter to investors released late on Wednesday, Netflix described the plan as an effective way of introducing Netflix to a larger number of people in India and to further expand company’s business.
Netflix has currently been offering three monthly plans in India in a price range of between 500 rupees ($7.27) and 800 rupees ($11.63).
