Netflix CEO lauds Reliance Jio's efforts for sharp fall in data prices in India

Reed Hastings, Netflix boss on Thursday lauded Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio's efforts which have brought about a dramatic fall of data prices in India resulting in the success of streaming services, reported Fortune India.

"Nowhere in the world have data costs gone from one of the highest to one of the lowest in a span of just four years as they have in India. In fact, without the transformation brought about by Reliance Jio, Netflix's business wouldn't have worked in India," said Hastings.

"We were fortunate that just as we started investing in content, other people were investing in transforming the Internet," added Hastings.

Regarding his future plans, he said, "We've been growing every year, we've been just building our team, developing content, figuring out what works, whether that's Sacred Games, or AK vs AK, just lots of different types of content. We're still in the learning phase. It's just the beginning of where we want to be in India."

On the consolidation of OTT space, he told Fortune India. "If you look at many markets on the Internet, it's pretty fragmented with lots of different players. Think how difficult it is to create a television station in any country. It's much easier to create a video website. So, I think there'll be a lot of choices," he said.

Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic situation where the audiences cannot visit cinema halls and rights to admission to the theatres are also restricted, he said, "The big focus for us is pleasing our members. So particularly in Covid-19, if we had a chance to buy movies that, you know, might have gone to the theatre, which makes sense. Basically, we want to spend on behalf of our members, to provide them content that they love. And if we do that we grow. What we're most excited about is developing our own content. And that's been a big success for us."

Talking about some of the current top trends, Hastings said, "I would say the first one is people using the Internet at home, both [for] video conferencing and entertainment. All of that commute time is eliminated. And they're not supposed to go out for social time. I would say people have gotten more curious about the world, because they see this, where did this pandemic come from? I have to think about the outside world. So there've been more interest in things happening around the world."