Ted Sarandos at Express Adda: ‘Netflix is both classy and massy’

Ted Sarandos at Express Adda: 'Netflix is both classy and massy' Ted Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO, on a decade of the streaming platform in India, why the major screen is not a competition and the role of data in viewership.

Key points

• (From left) Anant Goenka, Ted Sarandos and Usha Kakade, founder and producer, Usha Kakade Productions Isn't that skewed to Indians abroad?
• Ted Sarandos, co-CEO, Netflix (right), with Anant Goenka, Executive Director, The Indian Express.
• Ten years ago, globally Netflix had $6.3 billion in revenue, $120 million in profit and a $50 billion valuation.
• When we had the DVD business, we had more than 100, 000 titles.
• You had an offsite in India where you and Reed obtained on the Palace on Wheels and spent days discussing your India strategy.

Ted Sarandos, co-CEO, Netflix (right), with Anant Goenka, Executive Director, The Indian Express. (Photo: Renuka Puri).

Ten years ago, globally Netflix had $6.3 billion in revenue, $120 million in profit and a $50 billion valuation. Today, it's $45 billion in revenue, $1 billion in profit and a $400 billion valuation. It has been a tremendous decade. The fact that this happened in entertainment is special. You never had a right to win. You began with DVDs, had no production, no distribution. Amazon and Apple had distribution. Disney had production. But Reed Hastings had a conviction and obtained you to purchase into it.

When I met Reed in 1999, he remarked all entertainment was going to come into the home on the internet at a time when the internet was too slow, too expensive. We were talking regarding downloading movies as streaming didn't even exist. But it was clear that's where this was going. Mailing DVDs and managing people's queues was all regarding customer relationships, credit cards and taste preferences, so that you could apply the power of the internet to support residents find things in a world of almost infinite choices.

When you began, you had to say provocative things like the theatre business wasn't going to work. Every time a film does well in the theatre, do you obtain a target on your back?

We're not in the theatrical movie business. Whenever I've had anything to say regarding the theatrical movie business, it's mostly an observation of stats and behaviour. What has been great is that individuals on Netflix love movies. They love to go to the movies or watch them at home. Our average member watches seven movies a month on Netflix globally, and sees one or two every year in the theatre. I'm not saying one is better than the other. It's a rich ecosystem. When they want to go out at night, to go to a movie since it strengthens their relationship with movies, I want our members.

(From left) Sandip Somany, Chairman & MD, Somany Impresa Group; Mahima Kaul, Director of Public Policy, Netlfix, and Monika Shergill, VP Content, Netflix Do you not see them as competition?

Not at all. We compete for time. When you sit down, pick up the remote and push a button, we want it to be Netflix. We create sure every time you do that, you watch something you love. We want to become the first place you check for something to watch and the last thing you'd ever cancel.

When you say you compete for screen time, are you competing with YouTube, Instagram and anything that you're looking at on a screen?

We don't necessarily compete with YouTube on phones since what residents are watching on phones tends to be much shorter, vertical and free. When you obtain onto the screen in your living room, that's the screen time I'm talking concerning.

When we talk regarding algorithms, we often talk concerning polarisation and reinforcing biases. Netflix hasn't been mentioned in that list. Why?

We're trying to find a movie you're going to love; not trying to trick you into pushing play. That's actually quite bad for our business. We're trying to match something with you that you may not have thought you were going to love, and it turns out you did. That gives us an opportunity to tell stories from worldwide. Notably, the biggest barrier to someone in Iowa watching a Bollywood movie is that they've never seen one before. If we can obtain them over that hump, and they watch it and love it, it opens the door. We've had an Indian movie or series in the global Top 10 every week since 2024. We have three-and-a-half billion hours of Indian content being watched on Netflix worldwide this year.

(From left) Anant Goenka, Ted Sarandos and Usha Kakade, founder and producer, Usha Kakade Productions Isn't that skewed to Indians abroad? Indian content really hasn't crossed over in the way Squid Game did for Korean content.

When I travel worldwide, particularly in India, I obtain asked – as of what happened with Squid Game or La Casa de Papel – that when India is going to have that moment. India has that moment all the time, and it's much more probable to be in cinema. When we created Sacred Games, it was a different kind of television. But most of the history and what's coming through is projected to come through in cinema.

Lately, parliamentarians informed you to tell more Indian stories. Have you scratched the surface in India?

We're thrilled with our success in India to date. We've been at it for 10 years and we're still growing every year, month, quarter. With a population this size and an enormous appetite for entertainment, it's dramatically underscreened. There are fewer movie theatre screens per person than in almost any country in the world. But we can solve that difficulty with all kinds of screens that can tell those stories.

We brought India its first Academy Award for The Elephant Whisperers, and additionally won the International Emmy, had nominations for Vir Das and Delhi Crime, and won Best Hindi Film at the National Awards. Why plenty of American businesses have failed in India is since they think they understand India after making one movie that worked. But there are multiple Indias. Even to be successful locally, you have to travel nationwide. We don't do that from California. We do that from Mumbai. It's an intense desire to be ingrained in the entertainment community, ecosystem and economy of India, but most importantly, with Indian fans. Our individuals here love Indian movies and television more than anyone in the world.

How much of it is algorithm, and how much is the instinct of the local team?

I always refer to it as particularly informed intuition. There's no data in the world that could tell you to create this and don't produce that. You'll be wrong all the time. Data only tells you what worked before, and audiences are always looking for something they haven't seen.

Is the audience always looking for something it has never seen before?

They're always looking to be surprised. There are things where you can spend some time since it's comfortable. But what really moves the needle for a fan is, 'I've never felt this way before.' Those things don't come in some rhythm or formula. You can't reverse-engineer them. They come from a great idea, a visionary storyteller, the resources to bring that story to the screen, and a little bit of kismet. At the end of the day, it's all in execution. You can obtain false security by looking at the data. Where we always win is when we have creative executives with such keen instincts and courage that they say, 'I know what the data notes. I'm telling you that's wrong. This is going to work.' Look at Squid Game. No data would have remarked to produce it, certainly not for a global audience. In hindsight, everyone notes, "Of course it was amazing." But it was twice as expensive as any hour of Korean television ever produced. So yes, we have data, but if anybody created sizeable creative decisions based only on data, that would be a fool's errand.

What regarding the role of the star? In India, I assume it's significant.

Absolutely. The star is significant, more than in other markets. But it's the star and the vehicle. You can't just put the star into a role individuals don't necessarily want to see them in. Then, you're starting from scratch.

You had an offsite in India where you and Reed obtained on the Palace on Wheels and spent days discussing your India strategy. What came out of that?

What I loved regarding that trip was how swiftly it taught us there's not one India. You go to sleep in one part of India and wake up in another. It's like you've landed on another planet. It reinforced the importance of having a great local presence when making creative decisions for a market.

One uniquely Indian way of classifying content is as 'massy' and 'classy'. Do you think of the spectrum that way?

I love that phrase. I had never thought of it that way. When we had the DVD business, we had more than 100, 000 titles. What we learned was that people's tastes are remarkably diverse. When you ran the reports, almost every one of those titles had been rented, every year. That taught us that if you want to serve the world, you need something for everybody. I don't think consumers love their massy choice any less than they love their classy choice. In India, you've obtained residents who really love Lock Upp. And then you've obtained something like Musafir Cafe, a deliberate love story with beautifully shot landscapes. They sit right next to each other, serving gigantic audiences.

Four major broadcasters in India could differentiate themselves purely through content. You could if a show was on Zee, Star, Sony or Colors without seeing the logo. Is that something what you want to do?

No. When we mailed discs: personalisation, our real differentiator is no different today than it was 25 years ago. To do that, you can't be narrow. Compared with plenty of brands you mentioned, Netflix was always a general entertainment brand as we carried 100, 000 titles. That created it much easier when we moved into streaming.

According to You have, you're not going to secure into sports in India.

I remarked we have a global live strategy that includes sports. It doesn't include league sports like the whole season of anything. We've been fortunate enough to build a sizeable business without a loss leader. For most television seasons of sports, that's what they are. They bring an audience that you can pivot into something else. But it's particularly challenging to create capital on league sports since they're expensive.

In India, you're not the largest, by subscriber base. With IPL, you'd obtain top of the funnel. Was there no temptation to do that?

We were able to build this without it. A lot of great firms were born on those kinds of investments and eventually secured squeezed out. We didn't want dependence on any one thing. What's next for Netflix?

There's so much headroom in what we at present do. You could have asked me this question a year or two ago and we would have been completely wrong regarding some of the things that happened. We're in a constant drive to entertain the world. That means adding new content and new types of content, and upping the game for an audience that expects it.

You've put India's Obtained Latent on Netflix, the same content that is additionally on YouTube.

YouTube is sometimes a place where you discover things; no different from a film festival, film school or open casting call. In this case, the team was excited regarding the show. It came with a built-in audience and a popular host. It had all the elements individuals wanted, and we were able to bring it to Netflix.

You tried to purchase Warner Bros Discovery. Is Netflix going to keep looking for vertical integration?

Our expansion model has been and continues to be organic expansion. We look at all opportunities when they come throughout. You would be crazy not to look and kick the tires. We don't have 100 years of IP like a major studio. But that is a blessing since it has forced us to produce some of the most original creative stories on the planet. We looked at the Warner Bros accord as it would have accelerated our business model a bit. But when it was no longer the right cost, we were fine to walk away.

So in build versus purchase, you're on the build side? We have always been builders.

Taken together, the developments around ted Sarandos at Express Adda: 'Netflix is both classy and massy' point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.