Netflix has plans to roll out ads in India, but with the right model: Monika Shergill

Netflix entered India with a relatively premium positioning, but its content slate today spans prestige dramas, big-budget films, reality, comedy, South Indian cinema and broad-based entertainment. Yet Monika Shergill, VP, Content, Netflix India, says this should not be seen as a departure from the platform’s original proposition.

In a conversation with exchange4media on Tuesday at Netflix office in Mumbai, Shergill says the streaming giant’s strategy is to broaden its audience without abandoning the core that built the service. She describes the ambition as becoming “Netflix for all”, while continuing to bet on quality, variety and experimentation.

She also discusses the growing importance of South Indian content, the global travelability of Indian stories, Netflix’s approach to microdramas and why it sees audiences as increasingly “genre-fluid, language-agnostic and medium-agnostic.” The platform is also keeping the door open to IPL and cricket, but Shergill says any investment must make business sense.

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From Premium to Mass 

As the US-based Netflix expands into India's regional cinema, reality and newer formats, its India strategy is increasingly about building a broader entertainment proposition rather than choosing between premium and mass. 

Netflix, which completed a decade in India recently, does not see its evolution here as a reset, clarifies Monika Shergill, Vice President – Content, Netflix India. For her, the platform’s expanding slate is part of a continuous process of experimentation, one that has taken it from a relatively premium proposition to a much broader entertainment service without abandoning the storytelling craft that defined its early years in the market.

“I don’t like to use the terms ‘next’, or ‘reset’, because we are in a continuum,” Shergill says.

The principle, she adds, is to learn from what works and then avoid simply replicating it. “What is successful, make it special, learn from it and then do the next different special thing."

The strategy appears to be paying off as Netflix’s India business continues to expand. For the year ended March 31, 2025, Netflix India reported gross turnover of ₹3,768 crore, up 32.4% from ₹2,845 crore in FY24. Total income rose 32.7% to ₹3,842 crore, helped by higher streaming revenues and other income.

The broader Asia Pacific region, which includes India, was also Netflix’s fastest-growing revenue region in Q1 2026, although it remains a relatively small contributor to the company’s global business, accounting for 12.3% of its $12.25 billion quarterly revenue.

The growth comes alongside an increasingly expansive content strategy. In February, Netflix unveiled one of its broadest India slates, comprising 16 shows, 11 films and two reality shows, spanning new titles and returning seasons. The platform has also been experimenting with formats beyond its traditional scripted entertainment playbook, including the daily captive reality format Lock Upp. 

Continued Investment on ‘Netflix for All’

Netflix’s programming today spans premium drama and crime alongside comedy, reality, family entertainment and a growing regional slate. But Shergill rejects the idea that this represents a move downmarket.

“You can have a Sacred Games, a Delhi Crime or a Heeramandi, which is a premium drama at its highest level, and yet has mass appeal,” she says.

The distinction is important. Netflix is not trying to make every title appeal to every viewer. Its proposition is built around giving consumers a wide range of choices and using personalisation to determine what each viewer sees.

“Everyone’s version of Netflix is their own,” Shergill says. That makes breadth less of a positioning risk than it might be for a traditional broadcaster or a linear television network. A viewer who comes to Netflix for prestige drama can be served that experience, while another may encounter South Indian cinema, comedy or reality.

The ambition, she says, is “Netflix for all.”

She says Netflix is continuing to increase its content investment, with unscripted emerging as a major focus for the platform. The strategy is already visible in its growing slate of comedy and reality programming, including The Great Indian Kapil Show, which is set to enter its fifth season, along with India’s Got Latent, stand-up specials and other comedy properties.

While the OTT player no longer discloses its India subscriber base, industry estimates put the number at around 20 million. That gives the platform significant room to expand its audience, but also raises the strategic question of how far it can broaden its content proposition without diluting its premium positioning.

Regional to International

One of the clearest signs of that widening proposition is the rise of South Indian content on the global platform. “South is becoming more pan-India than we ever imagined,” Shergill says, pointing to the pandemic as a turning point in how audiences discovered stories from other parts of the country. 

The shift was not simply about language. Audiences outside the South began engaging with the region’s storytelling, cultural specificity and rooted characters at scale. ‘RRR’, she notes, effectively skipped the conventional progression from regional to national to international and became a global phenomenon.

Netflix was relatively late in building its South slate, Shergill acknowledges, but has accelerated its investment over the past three to three-and-a-half years. Alongside major box-office titles, it has also built a pipeline of smaller and mid-sized films.

The opportunity is significant because the addressable audience for regional content is no longer confined to its home market.

From Indian hits to global assets

That change is also reshaping how Netflix views the economics of Indian content. Indian content generated 3.5 billion hours of global viewing last year, according to Shergill. Heeramandi, for example, had around half of its audience coming from outside India, she noted. 

More importantly, the international audience is extending beyond traditional diaspora markets, with Indian titles increasingly appearing in Top 10 lists across countries.

For Netflix, that creates an economic logic that goes beyond a title’s performance in India. “We don’t even run country P&Ls because what we make here can travel across so many different countries,” Shergill says.

That does not mean every Indian story needs to become a global hit. Shergill points out that a regional story becoming pan-India is itself a significant achievement. But the potential for further travel gives successful Indian storytelling a much larger runway.

On IPL investment

Netflix India is not ruling out an investment in IPL or cricket, even as the next media rights cycle for the league approaches in the next six months. Asked whether the platform sees an opportunity in more specialised cricket packages and whether their consumers would come to Netflix for the cricket, Shergill said the key would be the experience the platform could offer.

“If you give them a certain experience in the best way, they will follow that experience,” she said. However, any such investment would have to fit Netflix’s broader business strategy and make commercial sense. “This is also something which has to be the right opportunity. It has to make business sense for us,” she said, adding that the company would announce its plans when the opportunity arises.

Netflix not chasing microdramas

That willingness to experiment extends to emerging formats, although Netflix is not currently making microdramas in India.

The company already has a vertical video feed and has experimented with shorter dramas in other markets, including 15-minute episodes in Latin America and, more recently, seven-minute episodes.

India has seen shorter episode formats as well, but Shergill says there is currently nothing in the works around microdramas.

Shergill says the platform already has experience with shorter-form storytelling. In Latin America, Netflix has dramas running for around 15 minutes per episode, while it has also recently introduced seven-minute episodes. In India, the platform has experimented with 25-minute episodes, Shergill points out. 

She is also not particularly concerned about the growing consumption of microdrama. “There will be different things that people try, and some things will become more popular than others,” she says, while arguing that long-form storytelling has a different value.

Her analogy: microdrama is “like instant coffee”, consumed quickly, while long-form stories are something audiences can savour. That philosophy is consistent with Netflix’s broader view of its role in the entertainment ecosystem. As Shergill cites Ted Sarandos: “We are not making things for people to kill time. We are making things for people to spend time with.”

"Audiences are language & medium agnostic"

India has also emerged as a market where Netflix has tested ideas that challenge its traditional scripted-entertainment identity. The platform introduced a daily captive reality format in India — a first globally for Netflix — with ‘Lock Up’ attracting attention beyond the market.

The learning was less about reality television itself than about audience behaviour: compelling programming can create habitual viewing irrespective of genre or language.

“Audiences are genre-fluid. They are language-agnostic. They are increasingly medium-agnostic,” Shergill says, adding, “That opens the door for Netflix to experiment across formats rather than define itself by a particular programming category.”

"Content decision tied to Subscription clock"

Ultimately, however, Netflix’s content strategy is tied to a more fundamental business consideration: retention.

“We are a monthly renewal service,” Shergill says. “We are very conscious of that. Every content decision therefore has to answer a recurring question: what new value can Netflix bring to its members?”

That makes the company’s planning horizon particularly demanding. Production can take two to three years, meaning the shows and films launching today were often conceived in a very different market environment.

The answer is not to predict perfectly, but to keep learning while moving forward. “The challenge is to learn from what works and then take the challenge of bringing the audience the next peak experience,” Shergill says.

For Netflix, the India opportunity is therefore not simply about moving from premium to mass, or from Hindi to regional, or from scripted to unscripted. It is about making those boundaries increasingly irrelevant to the consumer, while continuing to give the platform enough distinctive programming to justify the next monthly renewal.