iWorld
Local language content drives higher audience engagement: Netflix’ Patrick Fleming
Mumbai: Southeast Asia users consume two times more Netflix content than the global average, and India leads the charts, said Netflix, director of product innovation, Patrick Fleming at the ongoing virtual APOS summit on media, telecoms, and entertainment.
The streaming giant currently has over 209 million paid subscribers globally out of which 27 million subscribers are from APAC markets. While that is a fraction of the total user base, it should be noted that two-third of its paid subscriber growth was driven by the APAC market in 2020. “We know that a substantial part of future subscriber growth is going to come from outside of the US,” said Fleming.
Talking about the mobile-only plan, Fleming said, it has not been a success in all markets. The plan was first launched in India followed by Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand, followed by markets across Asia and Africa. “We introduced the mobile plan in markets only after experimenting with the right entry price and discerning the demand for video content on mobile,” he added.
Fleming said, “It is important for Netflix to speak more languages to cater to the APAC market. We now offer our content along with subs and dubs across 30 languages, so that a great show may travel anywhere in the world. For example, Thailand prefers dubbed content while South Korea prefers subs.”
While a show like “Money Heist”, “Bridgerton” and “Emily in Paris” has done well in markets like India and Southeast Asia, local language content consistently outperforms in terms of audience engagement, he observed. In India, that means local language films and, in South Korea and Japan that means K-dramas and anime. Launching more payment modes has also increased adoption. Netflix recently enabled autopay via unified payments interface (UPI) in India and GoPay in Indonesia.
The streaming giant has introduced a slew of nifty features that individually may seem like marginal improvements but are incredibly important to a mobile customer. The ideas first came in India and were then tested globally, noted Fleming.
These features include a native brightness, playback speed and lock screen functionality. Currently, the OTT giant is experimenting with a function that plays a short vertical video clip when the user hovers above a title. “The idea is to capture the shorter moments of consumption on mobile devices. The user may not sample the content immediately but may put it in his watch list for later consumption,” said Fleming.
Not just mobile, Netflix can be streamed across 1700 devices and Android and iOS operating systems (OS). Coding efficiency is vital when it comes to mobile customer experience. It was important that the Netflix mobile app was always in a ‘ready to watch’ mode, emphasised Fleming. Features like ‘smart downloads’ and ‘downloads for you’ were introduced to minimize memory usage and ensure that customers transitioned to the next piece of content seamlessly.
Netflix has also partnered with over thousand local internet service providers (ISPs) to join their open connect network so that it may deliver a high-quality video viewing experience. It has purpose-built boxes called open connect appliances that have been deployed at interconnection locations to localise substantial amounts of traffic by ISPs.
“Technology has come a long way in ten years,” said Fleming. “A decade ago you could transmit 1.5 hours of content with 1 Gb of data, in 2015 you could transmit 2.5 hours of content or an entire movie in 1 Gb, today you can transmit 6.5 hours of content or the entire first season of “Stranger Things” in the same amount. The same quality, fewer bits.”
In terms of product innovation, Fleming is bullish about interactivity and branching narratives. “Audiences have loved our interactive content like “Puss in Book” and “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch”. We’re working on an interactive mindfulness series with Headspace and there is the expansion into gaming” noted Fleming.
Netflix has launched two mobile games based on the “Stranger Things” franchise in Poland.
“Mobile audiences are wonderfully impatient,” remarked Fleming when speaking about the need to deliver top notch customer experience on mobile. “We’re not just competing with other long form content platforms but any platform that offers a unique mobile experience.”
iWorld
Tips Music CEO Hari Nair to step down
Girish Taurani and Sushant Dalmia to jointly steer the company as the hunt for a new chief begins
MUMBAI: A leadership shuffle is under way at Tips Music. Hari Nair, the company’s chief executive, will step down on April 30 as the music label begins the search for a successor.
The company said Girish Taurani, executive director, and Sushant Dalmia, chief financial officer, will jointly oversee operations during the transition while the board identifies a permanent replacement.
Nair joined Tips Music in 2023 and set about reshaping the veteran music label into a more digital, data-led enterprise. During his tenure, the company secured licensing and partnership deals with global platforms including Sony Music Publishing and TikTok, while renewing agreements with Warner Music Group.
Drawing on earlier experience in technology and entertainment, including a stint at ByteDance, Nair pushed the organisation towards a performance-driven culture. He built a brand partnerships division and introduced proprietary software systems aimed at strengthening digital distribution and data capabilities.
Kumar Taurani, chairman and managing director, credited Nair with embedding a data-led culture within the company and driving revenue growth in line with shareholder commitments.
In his resignation note, Nair said that after helping transition the label into a modern, digitally focused and process-driven organisation, the time had come to pursue his next leadership challenge.
The leadership change comes as the broader Tips Films group shows signs of financial stabilisation. In the third quarter of FY26 the company reported a net loss of Rs 2.86 crore, narrowing sharply from Rs 14.2 crore in the previous quarter. For the nine months ended December, losses stood at Rs 12.37 crore.
Yet revenue told a more volatile story. Income from operations slid to Rs 4 crore in Q3 FY26 from Rs 56 crore in the preceding quarter, taking total operating income to Rs 4.56 crore.
For a company built on a catalogue of more than 34,000 tracks and decades of Bollywood hits, the next chief will inherit both a digital engine and a volatile music market. The playlist may be familiar, but the next act at Tips Music is only just beginning.
