Should Disney come to India?

Population- India have a population of 138 crore or 1.38 Billion which is equivalent to 17.7%
of the world population. So India is a huge market for any International Consumer based
country. The projected number of smart phone users in India is estimated to be 442 Million
in 2022. Data is also cheap in India due to emergence of Reliance Jio in India. These are the
primary reason why Disney should target the Indian Market. Their Target audience can be
all smart phone users.
Pandemic COVID19- People are spending more time on social media and internet due to
lock down and work from home conditions. So it will be easy for Disney to market
themselves through Social Media Marketing at this time. They should give some free demo
on different social media platform and can use Prime Effect to earn money from these. This
can be done by the following way like there will some optional payment on the Demo where
some pictures of eyes can be placed that means somebody is keeping an eye on you.

Disney Plus is scheduled to go live this week on Hotstar, India’s premier streaming service. 

There are a number of unique factors surrounding Disney’s launch that indicate they’re
learning from the mistakes of other large U.S. companies, Netflix in particular and are well-
poised to dominate the massive Indian market.

Disney-owned Hotstar (they acquired the service when they bought most of Fox last year) is
India’s largest OTT service. Despite the presence of Netflix and Amazon, Hotstar controls
29% of the OTT market, around 300 million active users, according to Oddup, versus 5% for
Netflix and 10% for Amazon Prime.

There are two major reasons observers feel Hotstar is so far ahead, the first being price:
Netflix initially came into the Indian market thinking it could charge its standard rate,
around $10 (US) per month.

In a market like India, that put Netflix out of range of huge swaths of the population,
especially when compared to Hotstar which is ad supported and has plans that range from
around 40 cents (US) per month to $1.10/month. That’s a huge gap and gave Hotstar a huge
competitive advantage.

In addition to favorable pricing, Hotstar had cricket, Indian Premier League cricket in
particular, which is like having both the NFL and NBA in the U.S.—to give an example, 18.6
million users watched the IPL’s championship game last May, setting a global record for live
streaming. 
It also has programming from non-Disney companies like AT&T’s HBO: Hotstar’s initial
success was helped tremendously by the fact that it had the rights to stream HBO’s
immensely popular series Game of Thrones. 

Netflix has been trying to remedy its early missteps, launching a lower-priced mobile-only
version of its service at around $4 per month (U.S.) but that does not seem to have helped
them gain market share—the service is still viewed as something for well-off sophisticates,
not a mass market product like Hotstar.

Disney seems to be listening to its local partners as it launches Hotstar. To begin with, the
service will be named “Hotstar/Disney Plus” as a way of drafting off the Hotstar name. 
(India is the only market where Disney Plus will be hyphenated.)

There will be two levels of service available. The top level, priced at just $19.90 (U.S.) for the
year ($1.66/month) will include access to Disney Plus original content, along with popular
series from HBO, Fox, and Showtime.

A second level, priced at $5.30 (U.S.) for the year (44 cents/month) will give viewers access
to Hotstar originals and movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe but won’t offer access
to Disney Plus original content.

A final level will be free and ad-supported, but will not off access to any Disney Plus
originals.

Smarter still: Hotstar already has those levels in place and viewers will be automatically
upgraded when Disney Plus launches, ensuring that a high number of viewers will be
streaming (and likely chatting about) the service and shows like The Mandalorian when it
first launches, giving Disney a sizable boost.

While Disney content is known in India, it is not as well known or as popular as it is in

Europe or North America, which is why getting it out in front of a large audience is a smart
move.

A Very Complex Market

Disney may have a victory in the works here, but there are other factors at play in the Indian
OTT market.

Netflix has certainly not hung up a white flag. They are continuing to play with pricing
models. (While I don’t think we’ll see an ad-supported Netflix any time soon, if it does
happen, it will likely be in a developing market like India.)

The risk for Netflix and Amazon is that the Indian services have stronger ties to Bollywood
talent and will have offerings that are equally attractive—at a much more competitive price.