With the OTT market in India growing exponentially with more players entering the market, Netflix is looking at offering discounts on its rack-rates if subscribers take longer-term subscriptions, instead of renewing every month.
According to a Reuters report, the company is testing out a scheme where those taking three months’ subscription and paying upfront can enjoy a discount of 20% and those doing it for six months can get 30% off. The report says the company may cut the payment to 50% if customers opt to pay for an entire year.
“We believe that our members may value the flexibility that comes from being able to pay for a few months at once. As always, this is a test and we will only introduce it more broadly if people find it useful,” Reuters quotes a spokeswoman for Netflix India as saying in an email.
Netflix has three or four plans operational in India. One is the basic plan at Rs 499 per month a standard subscription at Rs 649 and a premium one at Rs 799 per month. Apart from this, there is the mobile only plan for Rs 199 per month.
The test rates at discounted prices is being offered in respect of the premium subscription. Here customers can avail the 3-months subscription at Rs 1,919 (Rs 2,397); 6-months at Rs 3,359 (Rs 4,794) and 1-year Rs 4,799 (Rs 9,588). The discount rates, as mentioned earlier, are 20%, 30% and 50% respectively. Obviously, this must be a strategy, by switching users to the premium category.
How far this offer helps Netflix scale up its customer base in the country remains to be seen. Netflix is calling it a test exercise, meaning it would watch the results and may extend to the other plans too.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was in the country recently and had revealed plans to invest over Rs 3,000 crore this year alone for developing more localized contents.
Netflix is currently directly competing with Amazon’s Prime Video, Hotstar, Zee5, Hulu and Disney’s newly launched streaming service.