Amazon announced its next upcoming straight-to-OTT ventures on Friday which includes Varun Dhawan-Sara Ali Khan’s ‘Coolie No 1’, Rajkummar Rao-Hansal Mehta ‘Chhalaang”, Bhumi Pednekar’s ‘Durgavati’ as well as Tamil film ‘Soorarai Pottru’ starring Suriya, Telugu film ‘Middle Class Melodies’ and Malayalam drama ‘Halal Love Story’. With these multiple films of various languages touted for release, let’s take a look behind Amazon Prime’s success.
India is a multilingual country and it doesn’t have a national language. Hindi is the most spoken language in the country and understandably, Bollywood is the biggest film industry in the country. But nearly every state has its own film industry, with its own tastes and preferences pushing the regional business. Amazon Prime understood this variation early on and went about to create an OTT platform for “multiple storylines for multiple Indias”, according to Gaurav Gandhi, the director and country general manager of Amazon Prime Video India.
The South-Indian movies which are available for streaming on the OTT platform, according to Gandhi, especially the regional films of the languages Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada – all have 50 percent of its views, coming from outside their home state – which is quite unique to these industries. Streaming on Amazon Prime Video has made these films accessible to the rest of the country, giving them a “true country-wide release”.
The OTT giant knew that the multiple language films would be their first barrier, and they focused on this issue from the very start. They launched Tamil and Telugu films alongside Hindi, Marathi and Bengali ones, when the streaming service came to India and a year later they introduced Kannada and Malayalam movies as well. A couple of years back, Amazon Prime Video added Hindi, Tamil and Telugu interfaces as well, proving that the “Streaming Kings” truly know their audience.