The Indian audience’s growing appetite for global OTT content

Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” Parasite director Bong Joon-ho had said at the 2020 Golden Globes, where the film won in the Best Picture – Non-English Language category. It seems the Indian audience is finally overcoming that barrier. Recent times have seen the Spanish show La Casa de Papel (Money Heist) and Korean series Squid Game stay put in the list of top 10 most-viewed shows for months in a row on one platform, while French films Titane and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire were reigning on another platform. As an official from a streaming service puts it, “Today, if you ask an OTT viewer who their favourite actor is, you may get a response like Lee Jong-suk (from Romance Is A Bonus Book) or Omar Sy (from Lupin).”
Here’s look at desi audiences’ expanding OTT palate, and all the swoon-worthy Korean rom-coms, Spanish action, Nordic thrillers and Turkish dramas they’re bingeing on.

‘Korean, Spanish, Japanese, French

content

is most popular’
Ashish Golwalkar, Head, Content,

SonyLIV

, SET, Sony Pictures Networks India, says, “Consumers are increasingly becoming language-agnostic. They have both willingness and appetite to consume content across languages.” A

Netflix

spokesperson adds, “Stories made in the farthest corners of the world are being watched and loved all over India. The emotions they evoke transcend the boundaries of geography and language. A story that is well told has the ability to make us laugh, or get excited or feel angry the same way, whether it is told in Hindi, English, Spanish, or French.”

Mansi Shrivastav

, Senior Vice President – Content, Alliances, Syndication, MX Player, says, “Foreign language content consumption has gone up seven times on MX Player in the last two years.” Streaming services point out that English, Korean, Spanish, German, Turkish and Japanese series are among the most-viewed foreign content in India, while for platforms dedicated to foreign cinema, it is French and Korean films that score highest.
Netflix, which started publishing top 10 global content numbers last year, had maximum viewership for the Spanish show Money Heist, which remained in its top 10 list of TV shows in India for nine months, while the Korean show Squid Game remained in its top 10 list for over six months.

‘Subtitles, dubbing have contributed to global content craze’
In 2020,

Monika Shergill

, vice-president (content), Netflix India, said in a blog that the K-dramas viewership in India (on Netflix) increased by over 370% in 2020 as compared to 2019. Similarly, in 2020, Viki, a US-based Korean drama-streaming platform grew from 3% in October 2019 to 46% in September 2020. Korean shows have become so popular in India in the last two years that a Delhi mall commissioned Squid Game wall art recently. During Halloween, the mask from Spanish series Money Heist was among the most popular costumes here.
Some of the credit for this popularity goes to subtitles, says a spokesperson from an OTT platform, adding, “Not just English, but subtitles and the dubbing of foreign shows in Indian regional languages has helped the audience watch international content.”
Mansi Shrivastav from MX Player, adds, “Indian audiences also find Turkish series appealing due to their production quality, narratives and universal themes. We have also seen a massive growth in the consumption of Korean shows. Mandarin, Spanish and Italian shows are quite popular too. These shows are not just dubbed in Hindi, but Tamil and Telugu too.”

‘Earlier, only a niche audience had access to global content through film fests. OTT changed that’
According to a rep from the OTT platform

MUBI

, India has always had an audience for world cinema, but today, this content is not restricted to only a niche audience with access to film festivals and societies. Apeksha Vakharia, Marketing Director, Asia-Pacific Content, MUBI, adds, “Over the years, Indian audiences have demonstrated a strong appetite for global cinema and since the pandemic, this only continued to grow. There is now an even wider hunger for rich stories, cutting across languages and genres.” The consumption of foreign content on OTT platforms increased so much here, that last year BookMyShow launched a transactional video-on-demand platform BookMyShow stream, where viewers can stream international films.