Netflix‘s lavish TUDUM fan event kicked off in right earnest this morning. The streaming behemoth made some interesting announcements in its Korean and Indian slates for the year. The English content segment of Netflix TUDUM is yet to begin. It is scheduled to take place at 10:30 pm India time, so there’s still some time left for us to discover all the happening content coming up at Netflix.
That said, Netflix’s India slate at Tudum again left us disappointed like always. And the reason for it is the one glaring mistake that Netflix keeps making year after year after year when it comes to India. It is a mistake that Netflix repeats on loop, disappointing millions of its users in India — and simply not being bothered about it!
Sharp-witted readers may have guessed what we’re talking about. It is the blatant, arrogant lack of consideration for the linguistic diversity of India. There is NOT EVEN ONE title from other Indian languages in the long list of content announced this morning on Netflix India’s Tudum segment. So many titles – nearly a dozen of them announced today – and all in Hindi. No Tamil, no Telugu titles, and certainly none from Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, and so on.
Prime Video scores much higher on this parameter than the so-called largest streamer in the world, aka Netflix. In its high-profile event in April, Prime Video announced several titles in Tamil and Telugu, a few of which have already seen the light of day, and been loved around the world – Suzhal, for instance.
Disney Plus Hotstar, SonyLIV and ZEE5 have all doubled down on creating compelling original content in Tamil and Telugu. There’s even original Malayalam shows coming up at SonyLIV soon. They are all Netflix’s closest competitors in India; and they’ve all got their India strategy right.
But Netflix India refuses to see and learn.
When will the stakeholders at Netflix get off their high horses and realise that India is a country that consists of millions of non-Hindi speaking people; that India as a lucrative streaming market requires vastly different handling than their regular, humdrum markets. Yes, we’re different from the rest of the world; and we’re proud of it.
It’s high time the folks at Netflix wake up and smell the coffee. Before it’s much too late.