Products

Insider Intelligence delivers leading-edge research to clients in a variety of forms, including full-length reports and data visualizations to equip you with actionable takeaways for better business decisions.
Reports
In-depth analysis, benchmarks and shorter spotlights on digital trends.
Learn More
Forecasts
Interactive projections with 10k+ metrics on market trends, & consumer behavior.
Learn More
Charts
Proprietary data and over 3,000 third-party sources about the most important topics.
Learn More
Industry KPIs
Industry benchmarks for the most important KPIs in digital marketing, advertising, retail and ecommerce.
Learn More
Briefings
Client-only email newsletters with analysis and takeaways from the daily news.
Learn More
Analyst Access Program
Exclusive time with the thought leaders who craft our research.
Learn More

About Insider Intelligence

Our goal at Insider Intelligence is to unlock digital opportunities for our clients with the world’s most trusted forecasts, analysis, and benchmarks. Spanning five core coverage areas and dozens of industries, our research on digital transformation is exhaustive.
Our Story
Learn more about our mission and how Insider Intelligence came to be.
Learn More
Methodology
Rigorous proprietary data vetting strips biases and produces superior insights.
Learn More
Our People
Take a look into our corporate culture and view our open roles.
Join the Team
Contact Us
Speak to a member of our team to learn more about Insider Intelligence.
Contact Us
Newsroom
See our latest press releases, news articles or download our press kit.
Learn More
Advertising & Sponsorship Opportunities
Reach an engaged audience of decision-makers.
Learn More
Events
Browse our upcoming and past events, recent podcasts, and other featured resources.
Learn More
Podcasts
Tune in to eMarketer's daily, weekly, and monthly podcasts.
Learn More

Netflix Struggles to Gain a Foothold in India; YouTube Dominates Digital Video Viewership

For our new collection of reports on video trends across the world, we published new India forecasts for digital video viewers, subscription over-the-top (OTT) users, Netflix viewers and YouTube viewers.

Overall, our figures show that the number of digital video viewers in India continues to grow as cheap data plans flood the market of 1.3 billion people. We estimate that there will be 290.8 million digital video viewers in 2019, an increase of 18.6% from the previous year. By 2021, we expect that number to reach 368.8 million viewers.

Below are our breakdowns for Netflix and YouTube viewers.

Netflix

Netflix has had difficulty gaining share of the Indian subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) market because of its relatively high prices and low amount of local-language content. Our latest estimates show that since entering the market in 2016, Netflix will have 8.1 million viewers in India this year, which will increase to 10.2 million by 2020. Netflix viewership in India makes up less than 5% of all digital video viewers in the country.

Netlflix’s challenge in India can be attributed to much higher prices for its services than that of local competitors. Its monthly subscriptions start at 500 INR ($7.31) and users are not allowed to watch on more than one screen at a time. Hotstar, a massively popular streaming service with 70% of the market, offers a VIP plan at 365 INR ($5.34) a year, making the cost of an annual Netflix subscription more than 15 times as expensive.

Netflix recognizes that its price is a major obstacle to gaining subscribers, which is why it announced at the end of July a 199 INR ($2.91) mobile-only plan that doesn’t offer HD viewing. Amazon Prime Video is another competitor in the market, and Netflix’s cheaper mobile plan is still more expensive than Prime Video's monthly 129 INR ($1.85) rate. Prime Video also offers much more local-language content.

YouTube

YouTube has inundated the Indian market, in part because it's free and ad-supported, and because it has become a regular part of people’s everyday lives. We estimate that this year, there will be 271.9 million YouTube viewers in India, which makes up a hefty 93.5% of digital video viewers in the country. By next year, that number will grow by 13.5% to 308.7 million. Growth will slow down by 2021 (10.9%), with 342.3 million viewers.

YouTube has experienced rapid growth in local-language content creation. Satya Raghavan, director of content partnerships at YouTube India, said that 60% of viewership in the country comes from outside the country’s major cities, with 95% of it in Indian languages.

Not sure if your company subscribes? You can find out here.