Immensely popular US-based TV streaming service Netflix was launched in 129 countries, including India, in January this year. However, Netflix’s India library was comparatively smaller and at the time, a lot of the content available to a user in the US, was not available to a subscriber in India.

To reach out to a wider audience, Netflix came up with multiple subscription plans for Indian users. The basic plan was of ₹ 500 per month, the standard plan was priced at ₹ 650 per month and the premium plan was offered at ₹ 800 per month. This was a brave move, considering the fact that many users here are used to downloading content from illegal sources for free.

Improved inventory: Slow work in progress

A look at the number of shows and movies available on Netflix in January and what it offers now reveals a significant step up. According to unogs.com, which keeps a record of the number of TV shows and movies which are available on Netflix in various countries, Netflix India had only 563 movies and 263 TV shows in January, while Netflix in the US offered 4,567 movies and 1,114 TV shows. After six months, Netflix in India now offers 916 movies and 368 TV shows, while in the US, Netflix now offers 4,042 movies and 1,138 TV shows. This shows that the India library is growing slowly, but it’s growing nevertheless.

To see if any of the popular shows which were not available back then are available now, we went through the Netflix India library. Popular shows such as House of Cards, Breaking Bad and Fargo are now available here as well. Interestingly, all the latest seasons of shows such as the Outlander, Orange Is The New Black, Marvel’s Daredevil and the Arrow were made available to Indian users at the same time they were released in the US.

Though the movie inventory has improved, we were not impressed as the India Netflix doesn’t have many of the popular titles yet. We couldn’t find a single movie by Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino, while the US Netflix has most of his popular movies such as Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Django Unchained.

Indian content on Netflix

One of the big let-down in Netflix has been its inability to channel local content, the way rivals such as Hotstar, Spuul and Eros Now have managed to do, albeit in a fragmented way.

Barring a few titles in Hindi, there aren’t many critically acclaimed movies or shows in Hindi or other major Indian languages. For example, we couldn’t find a single movie starring Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan. Netflix has recently announced that it will produce a bilingual series based on Vikram Chandra’s novel Sacred Games in collaboration with Bombay-based production company Phantom Films. As of now, Indian content is abysmally low compared to Eros Now, which has a library of over 2,000 movies available at a monthly subscription of ₹ 99. Even YouTube, which shows Hindi movies and TV serials with regular advertising, has more Indian content.

Unique feature for Indian users

To make Netflix more appealing to Indian users, a data saving mode was added to Netflix’s mobile app for both Android and iOS users. This feature allows users to modify the quality of the video streaming when the phone is on cellular connection. It allows users to watch 3 hours of movies on 1GB of data, which on regular streaming will use up 3GB data.

Also read: Netflix completes six months in India but there’s little to show for it

Netflix just made it easier to control cellular data use

Is it worth subscribing now?

Though Netflix’s India library is still much smaller than the US version, a lot of the popular shows, especially the Netflix Originals, are available to users here. Even with the limited number of movies and shows, Netflix is better than any other platform which allows users to watch international shows and movies without being interrupted by ads. Hotstar, which charges ₹ 199 per month, offers only 30 international TV shows at present. Plus, the Netflix originals are perhaps the most enticing reason to sign up anyway.

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