Netflix has slashed its subscription prices in India with its basic plan now available for ₹199, a significant reduction from its previous price of ₹499.

The other plans offered by the company also cost less after the change. The Standard plan, which offers Full HD content and allows streaming on two concurrent devices, will now cost ₹499, down from ₹649. The Premium plan that offers UHD content and allows streaming on four concurrent devices will now cost ₹649 instead of ₹799.

In addition, Netflix has also reduced the Mobile plan’s subscription cost from ₹199 to ₹149. All the other features remain the same, and people can only stream on mobiles and tablets with the Mobile plan.

The Basic and Mobile plans offer streaming in 480p on a single device at once.

Stiff domestic competition has led Netflix to cut profits

While Netflix is one of the most popular streaming services worldwide with over 200 million paying subscribers in over 190 countries, it has failed to capitalise on India’s big open market, primarily due to the stiff competition it faces from its domestic counterparts.

Other streaming platforms, including global competitors Amazon Prime and Disney+, offer monthly and yearly subscriptions at significantly lower prices.

To put things into perspective, Disney+Hotstar offers an ad-free yearly plan that costs ₹1499, SonyLiv offers a similar plan for ₹999 and Zee5 offer their ad-free annual subscription for ₹499. These three also have ad-supported plans that cost at least 40% less.

Amazon offers its entire Prime subscription, including access to Prime Video, Amazon Music and other Prime benefits, for an annual fee of ₹999 in the country.

In the face of such stiff competition, Netflix’s subscription cost reduction doesn’t come as a surprise — it never was a question of if but when.

The California-based streaming platform has been dabbling with content made in native Indian languages for the past few years and has increased the frequency of such titles in the past year, which has led more eyeballs to their content even if they aren’t subscribed yet.

While this isn’t the first time that Netflix has tried to penetrate the Indian market with a low-cost subscription, given that the price reduction has reflected across their list of plans could work in the company’s favour.

India is potentially one of the largest markets for anyone, including Netflix and other streaming platforms. An estimated 45% of the 1.38 billion Indian citizens use the internet, a bigger market than the entire North American population combined with the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. However, some of the biggest hurdles any content producer will face in the country are the scores of native languages and varying cultures across the land.

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