MUMBAI: Amazon Prime Video is boosting its content play in the market. The OTT platform is all set to stream its fifth Indian original Mirzapur from 16 November. In a media roundtable, Amazon Prime Video India content director and head Vijay Subramaniam also added that it will scale up originals further in 2020. Nine new Hindi originals are planned for 2019.
“I think it’s extremely important to understand that content has scale cinematically and our marketing matches that. It’s important for customers to feel that they are watching premium content and all of that in Rs 129 in a month,” Subramaniam commented.
It has been two years since Amazon Prime Video launched in India in the burgeoning OTT market. Since then, it has been very focused on customer taste and preferences. However, as India is a diverse market, the company wants to ensure that everything it does embraces diversity.
“It is a large market with multiple demographics and multiple segments. So it’s important to understand how we can cater to all of them consistently. Our customers are constantly evolving in their taste and preferences and we need to be updated on the kind of stories they watch and would love to watch. We need to go on that evolution with them," Subramaniam added.
The company, unlike its rival Netflix, has prioritised localisation since beginning. While the service already has content in six regional languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali and Kannada, it is also looking at adding more regional languages in next 12-18 months.
Interestingly, Subramaniam said that when new a language offering is launched, customers first seek movies. Hence, it tries to ensure adding the best and latest movies in the language to the library. After understanding their taste and preference, it adds content in other forms including originals. Right now the regional languages under evaluation for series-based content are Tamil and Telugu.
“In Tamil and Telugu, after having operated for a year, we looked at the opportunity to produce some series. Gangster was our first, another one in Tamil is coming out at the end of this month. These are both pilots in that sense. By putting these out we are trying to learn and understand our customers and get their feedback on what they like to watch. And once we have that we will definitely double down and scale up our originals in regional languages,” he added.
For the new nine-episode web series Mirzapur, Amazon Prime Video India has again collaborated with Excel Media & Entertainment after the Emmy winning Inside Edge. Set in the heartland of India, the show revolves around drugs, guns and the politics of power in a land where might is right. For the new show, while there have been enough large-scale outdoor marketing, there will be a lot of initiatives on the digital front too.
Amazon is confident that Mirzapur will make a mark not only in India but also globally. Breathe also did exceptionally well with 40 per cent viewers from outside India.
