Wondering who is winning in the streaming wars in India in Q1, 2021?

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Presented below is the section for India from The Global Television Demand Report. Enjoy!

India Digital Original Genre and Subgenre Preferences

• India was the most drama-loving market we looked at in this report. The 56.4% share of demand Indian audiences expressed for a drama digital original was well above the global average (49%).
• Outside of the US, India also had the largest share of demand for digital original comedies in this report (16.2%).
• The flip side of the outsize demand share for the two largest genres is that India has the smallest share of demand for digital original animation (2.2%) and children’s (2.6%) series.

• India was the only market we looked at where crime drama was the most in-demand digital original subgenre for the quarter. This was no doubt driven in part by the demand for Mirzapur, the top ranked digital original in India for the quarter.
• The thriller subgenre ranked higher in India than any of the other markets in this report.
• India was unique as the only market where the political drama subgenre was in the top 10 most in-demand digital original subgenres for Q1 2021.

India Platform Demand Share and Digital Originals Demand Distribution

• India has robust demand for original content from homegrown platforms. The share of demand for original content from local platform Zee5 (4.6%) puts it behind only Netflix and Amazon in India.
• Hotstar is the second largest local platform by share of demand for digital originals in India in Q1 2021. It’s 3.3% share of demand puts it ahead of HBO Max and on par with Apple TV+ in this market.
• While the strong presence of local platforms in India has put pressure on the demand share of most other major streaming platforms, Amazon Prime Video’s investments in this market have paid off and it actually has the largest share of demand in India (17.2%) out of the 10 markets we looked at.

• Unique among markets in this report, the most in-demand digital original of Q1 2021 in India is Mirzapur. The Indian series from Amazon Prime Video had 26.2 times the demand of the average series.
• The top ranked show from a local platform is Sony Liv’s Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story. This series was the 7th most in-demand digital original of the quarter and had 14.9 times the average series demand.
• Zee5 is the local platform with the largest demand share for original series. Its top ranked original for the quarter, Abhay, had 11.3 times the average demand and was the 21st most in-demand original.

India Platform Demand Share for Drama & Action/Adventure Digital Originals

• India is the market where Amazon Prime Video has the largest share of demand for drama originals in this report. Prime Video’s 17.9% share of demand is above its global average share of drama demand, 13.4%.
• Four different local platforms each had a greater than 2% share of demand for their originals – Zee5 (7.1%), Hotstar (4.6%), Voot (3.3%), and ALT Balaji (2.7%). This highlights the intense competition among streamers for Indian audiences’ attention.
• Hulu (3.5%) has the lowest share of demand for original dramas in India of the markets in this report. However, considering that Hulu and Hotstar are owned by Disney, the combination of these platforms’ shares would put Disney’s total share of drama demand ahead of Zee5 for the quarter.

• With a 26.7% share of demand for action/adventure originals, Disney+ has the lowest share of demand in this genre in India of markets in this report.
• In Q1 2021, Netflix had a 35.3% share of demand for action/adventure originals in India. This makes India the only market in this report where Netflix’s share of demand in this genre is larger than Disney+.
• Although Amazon Prime Video’s share of demand for original action/adventure series in India (18.7%) is larger than the other markets we looked at, it has declined each month this quarter. This is driven by Disney+ growing its share of demand here in Q1. Disney+’s share of demand eclipsed Amazon Prime Video in February.

Top Digital Original Series in India

Here are the top 20 most in-demand streaming original series in Q1 2021 across all platforms in India:

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