Prime Video Reaffirms Belief in Theatricals in addition to Streaming

In a captivating fireside conversation at AVIA’s Future of Video India conference, part of the inaugural World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit (WAVES), Kelly Day, Head of International & Vice President, Prime Video, and Gaurav Gandhi, Vice President, Asia Pacific & MENA, Prime Video, discussed Prime Video’s growth strategy, with a particular focus on India.

Kelly Day, Head of International & Vice President, Prime Video, shared a powerful perspective on the evolving viewing experience globally, stating, “We understand that people are selective about what they choose to watch in the theatre, but we think that the opportunity to bring audiences together and have a theatrical experience is still pretty magical. We believe in the theatrical window.” She emphasized that while not every film might take this route, Prime Video, being customer-focussed, remains ambitious about delivering the best possible experiences for customers across both theatrical and streaming windows, underscoring that “We’re going to continue to experiment to make sure that we not only maximize the opportunity around the films, but also make sure that we can deliver them to customers wherever they want to watch them. Our ambition is to produce around 14–15 titles a year for global theatrical distribution.”

This belief in delivering an elevated and versatile content experience seamlessly connects to Prime Video’s broader vision of becoming a truly comprehensive entertainment hub. As Kelly explained, “We think that it is unique. It starts with how we want to be the first place that people think of when they want to watch something. We know that as a streaming service, we can’t necessarily produce everything that hundreds of millions of customers all over the world might be in the mood to watch, and so it starts from this idea of how do we deliver the best possible selection for customers? It’s really about making sure that they can find anything that they want.”

Explaining Prime Video’s entertainment hub proposition in India, Gaurav Gandhi, Vice President, Asia Pacific & MENA, Prime Video said, “Globally, we have hundreds of add-on subscription partners. If you look at Japan, we have 70+ partners and India has 25+ partners already, and we’re building and growing this further.” Regarding Movie Rentals as a category, he mentioned, “We are doing category creation for TVOD in India. We have 7000+ titles on the rental service, and we see around 60% of those rented every month. We see rentals coming from 95% of India’s pin codes.”

On being asked where Prime Video is positioned in the APAC region and in India, Kelly Day said, “Prime Video is one of the more unique global streaming services. We operate in a little over 200 countries and territories around the world, with just over 200 million Prime customers globally. Our business is relatively unique in the countries where we have Prime, currently around 25 countries, where Prime Video is part of a bundle, which includes shipping benefits, video, as well as music, games, and other services. Outside of those Prime countries, Prime Video operates as a standalone streaming service.”

Gaurav Gandhi, Vice President, Asia Pacific & MENA, Prime Video, further expanded on this strategy with specific reference to India, he said “India is a super important locale for Prime Video. It continues to be a big growth engine for both, getting new customers to Prime and for engaging with Prime members. India is also a big content hub for us. Today, Prime Video India has one of the largest slates of original content outside of the U.S. This content is not just resonating with customers here, but outside India as well, as about 25% of our viewing actually comes from outside the country. Additionally, India is a big innovation hub for us for products. For example, it was one of the first locales where we launched a mobile edition plan. It is also the only locale where we actually have multiple flavours of Prime – Prime, Prime Lite, and so on. So, we can look at segmenting our customers basis what their needs are, and then we program for that. And then we take these innovations to other locations. We also have an interesting playbook of how we look at India, because we program here in 10 languages. As a streaming service you want to segment your offerings and you want to offer customer the language of their choice, but you also want customers to experiment with other languages. That playbook is so unique for India that we are learning from India and following it wherever we have multiple languages.”